Growing up in Europe: Contemporary Horizons in Childhood and Youth Studies [Reprint 2020 ed.] 9783110879094, 9783110144758

Citation preview

International Studies on Childhood and Adolescence 2

International Studies on Childhood and Adolescence (ISCA) The aim of the ISCA series is to publish theoretical and methodological studies on the social, cultural, economic, and health situation of children and adolescents. Almost all countries worldwide report increased risks and problems in the development of children and adolescents. Many pedagogic, psychosocial, and medical institutes as well as education and training centers are trying to help children and adolescents deal with problematic situations. They step in to help with existing difficulties (intervention) or to avoid problems in advance (prevention). However, not enough is known about the causes and backgrounds of the difficulties that arise in the life course of children and adolescents. There is still insufficient research on the effectiveness and consequences of prevention measures and intervention in families, pre-school institutions, schools, youth service, youth welfare, and the criminal justice system. The ISCA series addresses these issues. An interdisciplinary team of editors and authors focusses on the publications on theoretical, methodological, and practical issues in the above mentioned fields. The whole spectrum of perspectives is considered: analyses rooted in the sociological as well as the psychological or medical and public health tradition, from an economic or a political science angle, mainstream as well as critical contributions. The ISCA series represents an effort to advance the scientific study of childhood and adolescence across boundaries and academic disciplines. Editorial Board Prof. Klaus Hurrelmann (Coord.), Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Bielefeld, Postfach 10 01 31, D-33501 Bielefeld, Tel.: (49-521)-106-3834, Fax: (49-521)-106-2987; Prof. Günter Albrecht, Faculty of Sociology; Prof. Michael Brambring, Faculty of Psychology; Prof. Detlev Frehsee: Faculty of Law; Prof. Wilhelm Heitmeyer, Faculty of Pedagogics; Prof. Alois Herlth, Faculty of Sociology; Prof. Dietrich Kurz, Faculty of Sports Sciences; Prof. Franz-Xaver Kaufmann, Faculty of Sociology; Prof. HansUwe Otto, Faculty of Pedagogics; Prof. Klaus-Jürgen Tillmann, Faculty of Pedagogics; all University of Bielefeld, Postfach 10 01 31, D-33501 Bielefeld Editorial Advisors Prof. John Bynner, City University, Social Statistics Research, London, Great Britain; Prof. Manuela du Bois-Reymond, University of Leiden, Faculty of Social Sciences, Leiden, The Netherlands; Prof. Marie Choquet, Institut National de la Santé, Paris, France; Prof. David P. Farrington, University of Cambridge, Institute of Criminology, Cambridge, Great Britain; Prof. James Garbarino, Erikson Institute, Chicago, USA; Prof. Stephen F. Hamilton, Cornell Human Development Studies, Ithaca, USA; Prof. Rainer Hornung, University of Zürich, Institute of Psychology, Zürich, Switzerland; Prof. Gertrud Lenzer, Graduate School CUNY, New York, USA; Prof. Wim Meeus, University of Utrecht, Faculty of Social Sciences, Utrecht, The Netherlands; Prof. Ira M. Schwartz, University of Pennsylvania, School of Social Work, Philadelphia, USA; Prof. Giovanni B. Sgritta, University of Rome, Department of Demographic Sciences, Rome, Italy; Prof. Karl R. White, Utah State University, Logan, USA

Growing Up in Europe Contemporary Horizons in Childhood and Youth Studies Edited by

Lynne Chisholm Peter Büchner Heinz-Hermann Krüger Manuela du Bois-Reymond

W DE

G

Walter de Gruyter • Berlin • New York 1995

Lynne Chisholm, Institute of Education, Philipps-Universität Marburg, Germany Peter Büchner, Institute of Education, Philipps-Universität Marburg, Germany Heinz-Hermann

Krüger

Institute of Education, Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg, Germany Manuelaofdu Bois-Reymond Centre Youth Studies and Youth Policy, Leiden University, The Netherlands With 21 figures and 20 tables Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication

Data

Growing up in Europe / edited by Lynne Chisholm ... [et al.] p. cm. — (International studies on childhood and adolescence ; 2) Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 3-11-014475-1 (acid free paper) 1. Children - Europe. 2. Youth - Europe. I. Chisholm, Lynne. II. Series. HQ792.E8G76 1995 305.23'094-dc20 95-13599 CIP

Die Deutsche Bibliothek - Cataloging-in-Publication

Data

Growing up in Europe: contemporary horizons in childhood and youth studies / ed. by Lynne Chisholm ... — Berlin ; New York : de Gruyter, 1995 (International studies on childhood and adolescence ; 2) ISBN 3-11-014475-1 NE: Chisholm, Lynne [Hrsg.]; G T

© Printed on acid-free paper which falls within the guidelines of the ANSI to ensure permanence and durability. © Copyright 1995 by Walter de Gruyter & Co., D-10785 Berlin Ail rights reserved, including those of translation into foreign languages. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Printed in Germany Printing: WB-Druck GmbH, Rieden am Forggensee. Binding: Lüderitz & Bauer GmbH, Berlin. Cover Design: Johannes Rother, Berlin.

Contents

Editors' Introduction

1

I Charting Horizons Childhood in Europe: a New Field of Social Research Jens Qvortrup European Youth Research: Tour de Force or Turmbau zu Babel ? Lytme Chisholm

7

21

II Childhood and Youth in Intercultural Comparison The Value Orientations of Young Europeans Alessandro Cavalli

35

Growing Up in Three European Regions Peter Büchner, Manuela du Bois-Reymond and Heinz-Hermann Krüger

43

Young People and Employment in the European Community: Convergence or Divergence? Jean-Charles Lagree

61

Growing Up in Twelve Cities: the Families in which Pupils Live Irmgard Steiner

73

III Childhood, Youth and Social Change The Cultural Modernisation of Childhood Jürgen Zinnecker

85

vi

Contents

Growing Up in Southern Italy: Between Tradition and Modernity Carmen Leccardi

95

Modern Childhood in the Nordic Countries: "Dual Socialisation1 and its Implications LarsDencik

105

Childhood, Family and New Ways of Life: the Case of Sweden Elisabet Nàsman

121

Changing Family Transitions: Young People and New Ways of Life in France Olivier Gotland

133

From School to Work in a Transitional Society: Changing Patterns in Russia Ljudmila Koklyagina

145

Gender Segregation in the Estonian Labour Market: Stability, not Change Rein Vòòrmann

153

Growing Up and Social Change in Slovenia Mirjana Ule

161

IV Social Circumstances and Cultural Worlds Difference and Differentiation: Young Londoners' Accounts of'Race' and Nation Ann Phoenix

173

Political-moral Attitudes amongst Young People in Post-Communist Hungary Olga loth

189

Growing Up on the EU-Periphery: Portugal José Machado Pais

195

Gendered Youth Transitions in Northern Greece: Between Tradition and Modernity through Education Kiki Deliyannis-Koaimtzi

and Roula Ziogou

209

Contents

vii

Contradictions of Modern Childhood Within and Outside School

Ulf Preuss-Lausitz

221

Youth Culture in Transition to Post-Modernity: Finland

Jaana Lähteenmaa

229

Childhood and Poverty: from the Children's Point of View

Angelo Saporiti

237

V Prospects for Research, Policy and Practice Rumanian Childhood and Youth Research and Policy in Transition

Mihaela Minulescu

251

Young People and Social Transformation: Associative Life in Post-Communist and Independent Slovakia

Ladislav Machäcek

259

The Politics of Childhood, Children's Rights and the UN Convention

Heinz Stinker

269

Forum Challenges for Childhood and Youth Policy in European Context

Manuela du Bois-Reytnond

277

Perspectives for Child and Youth Oriented Policy in the FRG

Maria-Eleanora Karsten

280

On the Young Generation's Situation in the Transformation of Czech Society

Vladimir Dubsky

281

Problems and Challenges in Developing European Youth Policies

Lynne Chisholm

283

Youth Policy in the European Union

Burkart Sellin

286

References

289

Contributors

311

Editors' Introduction

Ongoing transformation processes in central and eastern Europe - which have included the reunification of Germany - and the moves towards greater economic and political integration in the European Union have opened up new perspectives not only for European-wide processes of economic, political, social and cultural integration but also those of renewed segregation. Both optimistic and pessimistic visions of a politically and culturally 'new Europe' have found their way into public consciousness and debate. Nobody is yet in a position to predict the directions in which these changes will take us. But one thing is certain: they will deeply influence people's lives, particularly those of today's children and young people. Are childhood and youth research communities prepared for the questions and problems connected with the emergence of such a 'new Europe'? Very unlikely - or if at all, then we are only beginning to take the first small steps. Childhood and youth research remain primarily nationally-oriented. An opening up has become more apparent in the past five years or so, but to date, youth research has shown more signs of furthering comparative and intercultural perspectives than has been the case for childhood research, where a community of discourse has yet to be firmly established. Once such communities of discourse do begin to constitute themselves, they can generate productive theoretical energy through mutual interrogation of interpretations and explanations. So, for example, West German youth research debates about the extension and de-standardisation of the youth phase and studies of changing values amongst young people have met up with theories of social and cultural reproduction and change developed, in varying ways, in French and British youth research (Chisholm, Büchner, Krüger and Brown 1990; Büchner and Krüger 1992). The growing interrogation between these traditions has provoked many questions about the nature and consequences of old and new inequalities in the patterns of chances and risks in young people's lives. The complexities of the intersections between regional, ethnic, social background and gender differences in shaping these patterns are brought irrevocably to the fore in considering and interpreting the qualities of young people's lives and prospects in a fluid and extended Europe. However, we are far from being in a position to transform and coordinate all these factors into coherent research programmes.

2

Editors' Introduction

European childhood research is not yet at a stage where interrogative theoretical debates of this order have gained momentum. In this case, the development of transnational perspectives could well turn out to be empirically rather than theoretically driven. The changes affecting children's daily lives - in the family, at school, in the context of media use and leisure activities - can hardly be overseen in the transition to high-tech information societies and globalised cultures. Developmental psychology perspectives, which have traditionally dominated research on children, can no longer analytically encompass these developments. The findings of empirical social research point towards the usefulness of new kinds of perspectives in which childhood can be seen as a social construction and is taking on the character of a distinct social life phase. This 'new childhood research 1 thus draws inspiration from contemporary European youth studies especially in relation to theorising the life course and studying life phase patterns and trajectories - but does not treat childhood and youth as if they were equivalent phenomena in sociological terms. The opening up of central and eastern Europe lends all topics concerned with childhood and youth a certain new urgency, an urgency that is underlined by the extension and consolidation of the European Union, whose policies are quite clearly directed at the creation and development of wider European citizenship and civil rights for future generations (see CEC 1993a). The issues and problems raised thereby cannot fail to be of interest and concern to politicians and academics alike. On the one hand, the idea is to extend individual scope for arranging one's education and paid work-life, to enable the free movement of citizens in general, to nurture something like a European identity and to connect the term 'civic society' to concrete values. On the other hand, new principles and practices of inclusion that extend citizenship rights and freedoms inevitably imply - and their implementation may even impose - new principles and practices of exclusion. The situations and prospects of children and young people in central and eastern Europe are closely linked with these kinds of changes, as are the positions of those who belong to cultural and ethnic 'minority groups' within the Community itself. This volume hopes to contribute to the further development of transnational and intercultural childhood and youth research communities of discourse, at both theoretical and empirical levels. The contributions arise from the international conference 'Growing Up in Europe', which took place at the University of Halle-Wittenberg in March 1994, at which some forty specialists from some twenty countries from all corners of Europe spent four days exchanging information and views on the implications of contemporary social change for childhood and youth as social life phases and in specific cultural, economic and political context. The sheer range of information, themes and perspectives represented by the papers included in this collection conveys with some force the scale of the intellectual task that confronts us in the coming years. The intellectual challenge is equalled, if not surpassed, by the political challenge. Again and again, conference participants voiced their fears that today's and future generations of children and young people will be subject to segregation and marginalisation processes and that their life prospects continue to be threatened by structural inequalities from an early age. The

Editors' Introduction

3

conjunction of individualisation processes with the persistence of ever more complexly structured inequalities produces an intensified experience of tensioned contradictions and psychic stress unbuffered and unmediated by the power of community and tradition. It was therefore all the more important to the conference participants that academic discussion be joined to policy debate. To this end, the meeting closed with a public forum in which issues and problems arising from research and during the conference were discussed openly and reformulated into sets of policy-making demands. The statements that initiated the forum debate are also included in this volume. Those demands equally underline that coherent transnational research projects and programmes are a vital aspect of developing childhood and youth policies appropriate for Europe's changing circumstances and that improve children's and young people's quality of life. These, too, presently elude our concrete grasp, but we press on in the hope that this book is another of the very small steps along the way to a positive version of a new Europe. Producing a collection of papers from writers who work in such a broad range of countries, academic traditions and mother tongues is a formidable task. It can be brought to a successful conclusion only with efficient organisation, goodwill and endless good humour in the face of innovative grammar, incompatible graphics and confused fax machines. In the first instance, of course, this volume could never have appeared without the financial support for the conference provided by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (German Research Council) and the Landeszentrale für politische Bildung in Sachsen-Anhalt (Provincial Centre for Civic Education in Saxony-Anhalt), for which we express our thanks. The smooth running of the conference itself owes a great deal to the support provided by Petra Essebier, Cathleen Grunert and Susan Richter at the University of Halle-Wittenberg Institute of Education. The book production required a large-scale team effort. Yvonne Bader and Katarina Düringer at the University of Marburg Institute of Education were pivotal to the success of that effort, in that they took complete responsibility for the technical and administrative work involved. Our sincere appreciation goes equally to Dieter Renz, who voluntarily proofread the entire manuscript. Last but by no means least, the Volkshochschule Esslingen (Community College Esslingen) gave generous access to its excellent computer facilities as the final manuscript was assembled; special thanks are due to Martin Bauknecht who saved the graphics. When the idea for this project was mooted in early 1993, we certainly did not fully envisage the scale and the range of support we would need to bring it to fruition in this volume. We can but express our appreciation and admiration that so many people have given so freely of their competences and their time to help us to do so.

January 1995

Lynne Chisholm Peter Büchner Manuela du Bois-Reymond Heinz-Hermann Krüger

Childhood in Europe: a New Field of Social Research Jens Qvortrup

Introduction: the boom in childhood research It has for some years been commonplace to speak about a new research in childhood and even about a boom. The enormously growing interest can easily be documented: only a few years ago, Ambert (1986) demonstrated how surprisingly little had so far been written by sociologists about childhood, either in classical sociology or by North American sociologists. Children were hardly represented in the pages of specialised journals, and in journals within family or educational sociology, where one might expect children to find a place, they were only seldomly focused upon. There were no university courses in sociology of childhood, and sociologists of childhood did not have any organisational platform to promote their common interest. Much of this has now at least begun to change. Large projects are being conducted even at an international level; books about sociology of childhood are beginning to emerge, quite a number of articles find their way to journals and books - and even a few journals devoted to sociology of childhood are being published. Also organisationally, new activities can be documented. With a lag of about one century - compared with psychologists, psychiatrists, educationalists etc. - sociologists of childhood convened for the first time in 1990 at the World Congress of Sociology. By the Congress in 1994 we had problems in finding the time for all those who wished to present a paper. National organisations have emerged in the UK, in the FRG, in France, in the Nordic countries and in the US, where within a very short time more than 450 persons have taken out membership. In other social science disciplines, too, a new attention has been directed to childhood. In 1973, Charlotte Hardman wrote an article with the title Can there be an Anthropology of Children?-, in 1990 Sarah James addressed the question Is there a 'place' for children in geography? (see also Matthews, 1992). Jonathan Benthall (1992a) talked about The ethnography of children as 'late developers'; in law, and partly in philosophy and political science, similar developments have taken place, whereas history has for a long time made remarkable achievements. Economics is the only discipline left in which interest remains weak, but my prediction is that this will soon change.

8

J. Qvortrup

So the boom is there - but is the issue new, and why is the boom coming now? The term 'sociology of childhood' itself is traceable as far back as the 1930s, but over the next half century only a handfiil of books carried this notion in their titles. Furthermore it is doubtful whether they would be accepted as such by most contemporary sociologists of childhood; in any case, most of these books define 'socialisation' as 'the core-issue of a sociology of childhood' (see for example Fürstenau as late as 1973) - a view which most sociologists of today would oppose. There was, however, an interest in children prior to the Second World War. It is interesting, for instance, to note that while the 1968 edition of the International Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences had nothing to say about the social life of children (only references to psychology and psychiatry were made), the 1930 edition included 58 pages on 'child' - divided into 12 parts. The main tenor of the contents was, however, much more clearly related to social policy issues in the broad sense than to a search for knowledge in the nature of the children's position in society. The same holds for quite a number of books which appeared at the beginning of the century, at first especially in the US and the U.K., but also for Ellen Key's famous volume The Century of the Child, which appeared in exactly the year 1900. Much of the interest guiding contemporary researchers differs little from this earlier interest - and I shall take this up in terms of an answer to the question of why the boom of the new interest is appearing now, from, say, the mid-1980s. There may not be simple answers to this question; references have been made to 'the curious developments of divisions of labour in scholarly disciplines' (Furstenberg 1985); to the low prestige of the topic and therefore not rewarding in academic life (Ambert 1986; Wacksler 1986); to the publication of a few seminal works - in particular Philippe Aries' (1962) book on the history of childhood, and perhaps also Lloyd deMause's (1974) collection of articles on the same issue. None of these suggested reasons are very convincing, they rather 'beg the question'. Ambert (1986) alludes to the only answer that makes sense to me when, in paraphrasing Merton, she writes that "sociologists would turn seriously to the systematic study of interaction between [childhood] and society only when [childhood] itself came to be widely regarded as something of a social problem or as a prolific source of social problems" or, in Adorno's (1973) words, "that the academic division of labour projects onto the world is only mirroring what happened in the world" (ibid. 10). This answer to 'why the boom is coming now is supported by the fact that the new orientation of childhood research has cropped up more or less simultaneously (if at first independently) in a number of industrial societies which, in a globalised world, exhibit largely the same kind of societal features. But what are the problems that childhood constitutes for society or for sections of society? What is the misfit between childhood and adult society?

Childhood in Europe: a New Field of Social Research

9

Paradoxes between the individual and the structural levels We are faced with a number of paradoxes as far as the relationship between childhood and adult society is concerned. Our culture's uneasiness about and ambiguity towards childhood can be usefully listed as a series of nine paradoxes:

1. Adults want and like children, but are producing fewer andfewer of them, while society is providing less time and space for them. 2. Adults believe it is goodfor children and parents to be together, but more and more they live their everyday lives apart from each other. 3. Adults appreciate the spontaneity of children, but children's lives are more and more organised. 4. Adults state that children be given first priority, but most economic and political decisions are made without having children in mind. 5. Most adults believe that it is best for children that parents assume the major responsibility for them, but, structurally, parents' conditions for assuming this role are systematically eroded. 6. Adults agree that children must be given the best start in life, but children belong to society's less affluent groups. 7. Adults agree that children must be educated to freedom and democracy, but society's provision is given mostly in terms of control, discipline and management. 8. Schools are generally seen by adults as important for society, but children's contribution to knowledge production is not recognised as valuable. 9. In material terms, childhood is important for society rather than for parents themselves; nevertheless society leaves the bulk of expenses to parents and children. This list of paradoxes - and one can add to it - is long enough to suggest a profound ambivalence in adult society's attitudes to childhood with respect to the relationship between what we wish for our children and the conditions under which children live. What is displayed in these paradoxes and this ambivalence is the classic problem of dualism in sociology: it is the problem of the relationship between a macrocosmos and a microcosmos; between history and biography; between the level of social structure and that of the family. There is no convincing evidence suggesting that individual adults or couples in general are hostile towards children. On the contrary, a profound desire for having children is documented by the fact that more women become mothers (albeit to fewer children) than a century ago. This desire is also documented by the media in childless couples' desperate efforts to get a child by all means, including artificial ones. If, therefore, the paradoxes represent a plausible diagnosis of modern society's ambivalence to childhood, then we may equally speak of a 'structural disregard1 and a 'structural indifference' towards childhood (Kaufmann 1990).

10

J. Qvortrup

The proposal that childhood receives insufficient consideration in culture, economy and politics, is similarly confirmed when the reality of childhood is confronted with our public rhetoric, such as 'the child must be given first priority' or 'to act in the child's best interest'. Our wishes and intentions to realise such phrases are certainly visible in social workers' and politicians' efforts to intervene on behalf of dangerous and endangered children (Ennew 1994). The seemingly growing number of abused children and instances of violence among children has, for its part, caused no less of a public outcry. The putative dissolution of family values - reflected, for example, in a dramatic increase in the divorce rate over the last decades, or in the incompatibility between parents' working time and their wish to care for their children - are pertinent and much debated issues. Public attention paid to a too abundant sample of troubled cases in which children are involved reflects an apparent helplessness on the part of adult society vis-à-vis a seemingly invisible hand, or to be more precise, vis-à-vis the undesired consequences of structural factors, that have been set in motion by the very same adult society with the purpose of achieving quite other ends. This entails results similar to what economists call 'diseconomies', and amounts to suggesting that childhood is caught in an interplay between forces and interests that are stronger than those promoting the needs and interests of children themselves. The boom has, however, in the first instance given rise to an impressive amount of research activity, particularly social policy-related research. The classic distinction between pure and applied research is not a very happy construct, for it may imply that pure research is more or less useless because somehow incapable of application. Typically, though, applied research is more concrete and closer to a policy level, which also has its drawbacks, since time is usually too short for analytic depth. If it is genuinely the case that children's conspicuous plights only represent the tip of the iceberg of the problems they face, then there is an urgent need for researchers to conduct in-depth research that contributes to a better understanding of underlying societal developments, be that in terms of theoretical or empirical research. The task that lies before us is therefore to give an answer, inter alia, to the paradoxes listed above, and thereby to unravel the ambivalences of adult society towards childhood. If, as some politicians will tell us, it is true that our knowledge is sufficient and it is now time to act, we must be forgiven for formulating a tenth paradox, namely: why is it that many children are still troubled in societies that are more affluent and which allegedly dispose of more knowledge about children than ever before? The paradoxes, ambiguities, questions and problems concerning childhood and society clearly give rise to different theories and to different methods for exploring children's life conditions. However, these theoretical and methodological differences nevertheless have something in common. Most of the new sociological thinking about childhood is structural rather than individual; it is relational, first of all with respect to an intergenerational perspective; and it seems to be more interested in typical, normal and common conditions for the majority of children, i.e. the focus is no longer merely on children in particularly critical situations.

Childhood in Europe: a New Field of Social Research

11

Studying childhood in its own right Whatever the specific theme of concern and interest, it is worth reiterating that the centre of the research is and must be children or childhood. It is astonishing to observe how many researchers have almost literally expressed themselves in the same way about this point. Hardman (op. cit), for instance, writes that her approach regards children as people to be studied in their own right, and not just as receptacles of adult teaching. My search is to discover whether there is in childhood a self-regulating, autonomous world which does not necessarily reflect early development of adult culture (ibid. 87).

This quotation contains the key-phrase, used by many others, that children 'be studied in their own right', and furthermore that childhood be accepted in research as 'a selfregulating, autonomous world'. What does it mean to study children in their own right, to look at society from a children's perspective or to take a children's standpoint - in much the same way as has been argued for women's studies and gender research (Alanen 1992, 1994)? In the first place it does not refer to platitudes about adults trying to look at the world as were they children themselves; this would be illusionary for the simple reason that adults are not children and therefore not qualified to doing just that - exactly as men are not able to perceive women's world as were they women. But just as it is not impossible (in my view) for men to conduct women's studies or gender research, it is also not impossible (in my view) for adults to conduct research on children. In any event, there is hardly any viable alternative in the latter case. What 'taking children's standpoint' means is that researchers describe, explain and interpret aspects of children's life world using the research tools they have developed to do so. In terms of describing children's life conditions, the demand is to use children as our unit of observation and as mediators of information. In, for instance, quantitative accounts it is in principle not a problem to use children as units of observation; the problem is that this method is not used enough, i.e., we still have an enormous dearth of child-directed information in official statistics and other tools of public accounting. Children's low priority in this respect becomes clear when statisticians tell us that the production of data on children is not a technical, but merely an economic problem. In other words, it can be done, but other things are more important. In terms of survey analysis or participant observation it may be more difficult, and we need much more experience for developing research instruments that respond to the demand of gaining better understanding of how to use children as informants on their own lives. The real difficulties arise in interpreting the data collected, of whichever kind. In childhood research, the question of objectivity and validity is more acute than in any other social science field, because children are the only age group that does not conduct research itself. They have to leave the interpretation of their own lives to another age group whose interests are potentially at odds with their own. This problem in the sociology of knowledge has remained so far almost wholly unexplored.

12

J. Qvortrup

For potential allies of children in producing knowledge about their life conditions there remains to be solved the epistemological grounded contradiction between a sociology from a children's standpoint and the fact that its producers necessarily have a different way of knowing, living, experiencing, and acting in the world (Alanen 1994, 41).

The study of childhood in its own right also means not to mix it up with other issues or agents, such as for instance the family. The familialisation of childhood is not only an ideological view about children's proper place, it is also methodologically a way of depriving children of their right to be visible. This is perhaps seen most clearly in statistics, which typically employ family vicariously as a unit for all its members; actually it is its adult members who both, 'count' and are counted. As Oldman (1991) has suggested, the familialisation of statistics implies that children are hidden under other family categories. Children are only represented in public statistics when the state requires this to be so - a phenomenon he calls capitalisation. The problem of children's visibility as people and persons in their own right - is, however, also appreciated in most family sociology, which seems to regard parents as of paramount importance, while children - as in statistics - are conceptually treated as dependents, who - although emotionally priceless (Zelizer 1985) - are costly items in parents' time, money, and career budgets. Nobody would deny that the family has been and remains one of children's most important arenas. But the question of whether all family members - i.e. mothers, fathers and children - share common conditions and interests remains an open, virtually unexplored issue (which is no longer so in the case of gender relations). Furthermore, we already know that children in modern society spend a large part of their time outside their homes, and therefore their very own time-use should be acknowledged in its own right, instead of being reduced to an item on parents' time-budgets. The individualisation processes that underlie these developments are no longer phenomena that can be reserved for adults; children, too are, while acting outside the home, representing themselves more than their family. We live in a rapidly changing world, in which the distance between generations becomes ever shorter from a cultural point of view, but perhaps ever longer in terms of consciousness. Even if parents would wish to, they can no longer be with or control their children most of the time - neither in temporal, spatial or physical terms, nor in symbolic terms, since parents themselves eventually lack command over modern cultural artefacts and experiences (such as for instance computers, teaching material or codes for peer-group behaviour and relationships). Nevertheless, it goes without saying that cooperation between family sociology and the sociology of childhood is indeed necessary. In my view, family sociologists can do the junior members of the family a great service, if - to begin with children are seen as independent, at least analytically. Terminologically, the notion 'family' is too often used as if it were synonymous with parents, as in phrases like 'it is the task of the family to educate its children', or 'the family must have insight in the schooling of children'. In investigating intergenerational relations within the family, at the very least, the sociology of childhood will need support from family sociologists.

Childhood in Europe: a New Field of Social Research

13

Childhood and generation When Hardman (op. cit.) writes that childhood be accepted as 'a selfregulating, autonomous world which does not necessarily reflect early development of adult culture1, she is in all likelihood warning against the kind of 'conventional' research that focuses on childhood in a forwardlooking perspective (i.e. in terms of socialisation) and recommending that exploring childhood be explored as something in and of itself. There is no doubt that socialisation is regarded as a rather dubious concept by most contemporary childhood sociologists. The rather negative attitude to socialisation lies in what one might call the eschatological trend in traditional research on children, i.e. the inherent anticipatory nature of socialisation. By definition, socialisation looks forward in terms of individual development - away from childhood; it does indeed reflect the idea of childhood as the early development of adult culture. This scepticism towards socialisation is, in my view, a precondition for studying childhood in its own right. 'Socialisation' is - together an 'ahistorical, individualist, and teleological' concept of development (Thome 1985, 696). In a sociology which claims its raison d'etre to be in a commitment to the perspective of children, socialisation is interesting only in two ways: either if it is understood as a mutual interactive process in which not only children but also adults change (Blum 1990, 38ff; Ambert 1992), or if it is understood at a metalevel as one part of a number of adult apparatuses which massively contribute to forming children's lives. In this latter sense, the concept of socialisation is also distinct from that used in traditional sociology of education, i.e. a concept which focuses on individual transitions. To avoid misunderstandings, it is important to add that the uneasiness about concepts like socialisation or personal development does not mean that the contemporary study of childhood should not relate to adulthood. On the contrary, the social scientific study of childhood must necessarily relate to other social forms in society. It is impossible to make assessments of any social group or form without making comparisons to other groups or forms, and as far as children are concerned there is a prime logic in making comparisons along the generational dimension. A report on a seminar about the ethnography of children in the early 1990s in England under the title children as actors concludes that it was notable that at the end of the two days, the group of 30 people reached a unanimous view: that the ethnography of children can be pursued with theoretical rigour only if it is treated as the special focus of a more inclusive project which covers relations between children and adults in a given society, and discrepancies, often amounting to inversions, between the children's and adults' apprehensions of their world. It seems possible that, within a decade or so, many anthropologists will find it analytically valuable to give attention to distinctions between childhood and adulthood in particular social contexts (Benthall 1992b, 23).

It is also important to underscore that groups other than 'age-groups' are conceivable as reference groups in relation to children. In recent sociological research, children or childhood are frequently described in terms of concepts like 'marginalised', 'excluded', 'invisible', 'silenced', 'muted' or 'minority categories'.

14

J . Qvortrup

Other groups which have been similarly depicted are those sharing disability-based, ethnic, gender, national, racial characteristics. The extent to which comparisons with such groups are valid depends on the conceptualisation of childhood as a social category in the given context. Nevertheless, in my view it is not the case that "the big difference between children and other browbeaten groups is that children's 'minority' status normally comes to an end" (Benthall 1992a, 1). The eschatological or anticipatory perspective on children, which characterises developmental or socialisation views of children, lies behind such a statement. It is as true as it is trivial to say that children normally reach adulthood. But while the child in this sense disappears from childhood, childhood itself does not disappear, but remains as a social form (Qvortrup 1990). This is one of the more important distinctions to be made in the sociology of childhood: Children ... may be said to constitute one conceptual area, one segment of this stock [of beliefs, values, social interaction]. The children will move in and out of this segment into another, but others take their place. The segment still remains. The segment may overlap with others, may reflect on others, but there is a basic order of beliefs, values and ideas of one group which bounds them off from any other group (Hardman, op.cit., 87).

Since Hardman is writing from an anthropological point of view, one might, as a sociologist, add that this statement holds for many other areas than beliefs, values and ideas: childhood actually constitutes - in general terms - a segment of society. This is a crucial point concerning the difference between a developmental and a social structural conception of childhood. It has basically to do with the question of the dynamics of the concept of childhood. While in psychology the dynamics reside in the development of the individual and her/his individual dispositions, in sociology the dynamics relate to societal development. This is what makes intergenerational mobility studies so questionable: it would be more pertinent to think of 'collective mobility' (Ferge 1974). Ferge's studies concerned the relative status of the working class to the capitalist class (or the lower to the upper classes): how were the changes in the relative positions of classes to each other over time? An upward mobility of the working class, for instance, had in her view only taken place if a narrowing of the income span or an equalisation of educational levels had occurred over time; and this might have happened despite the occurrence of a number of movements in the opposite direction by single individuals. Applied to childhood, one may likewise propose studies of the historical dynamics of childhood: how does childhood - as a collectivity - the status of children and the life conditions of children change over time compared with other groups and segments of society? Or interculturally: how does childhood in one country compare with childhood in another country? Can inventories of indicators throw light on whether childhood has come closer to other social groups (for example, in terms of economic or social factors) or remains more distant from them (for example, in terms of cultural factors, cf. Aries 1962; Benedict 1938)? Last but not least, the intergenerational perspective is relevant for a comparison between childhood and youth, to the extent that both are seen as 'age-groups', even if the age-factor as such must be of secondary importance to social factors, which then correlate with age.

Childhood in Europe: a New Field of Social Research

15

There are undoubtedly many overlaps between childhood and youth as social categories, and the question is which legal or cultural factors define the borderlines between these age groups (and to what extent they possess defining power). In practical terms, one could define the end of compulsory schooling as the boundary line between childhood and youth, because from this point onwards, young people acquire rights to make decisions about their lives and practices. This is the definition used in my own research.

History and biography In order to answer questions about historical dynamics we need not only indicators of the status of childhood, but also comprehensive knowledge of past and present childhood. Fortunately, the contemporary childhood research has been blessed with an impressive body of historical studies. Not only Aries and deMause, Donzelot (1979), Meyer (1983), Piatt (1977), Zelizer (1985), Hendrick (1990), Sommerville (1982), Cunningham (1991) - to mention some - have published historical studies of childhood. This gives, at least in principle a good opportunity to think in terms of the historical dynamics of childhood; and to this literature we can add material from Third World countries (van de Loo and Reinhart, 1993, Ennew and Milne 1989, Caldwell 1982, Rodgers and Standing 1989). A reluctance to include socialisation and development research as relevant areas in sociological studies of childhood does not mean that the baby should be thrown out with the bathwater, so to speak. As Wright Mills (1961, 6) points out, biography and history must meet before the intellectual journey comes to an end. The generational perspective in contemporary childhood research also includes research of this kind, as in, for example, European regional studies of historical and contemporary childhood, children's lives and parent-child relations (Behnken, du Bois-Reymond and Zinnecker 1989; du BoisReymond, Büchner and Krüger 1994 and in this volume). This kind of work links changing patterns over time with modernisation processes in the tradition of Elias (1939/1978), and it is careful to distinguish between developmental and social biographical perspectives on childhood, which are "offered by the sociology of culture and the sociology of civilisation: lives of children and transition from childhood to adolescence are supposed to have a social logic of their own, which, nevertheless, must be seen in interrelationship to adult life" (du Bois-Reymond, Büchner and Krüger 1993, 88). The most well-known studies in this genre are, of course, Elder's (1974; Elder, Modell and Parke 1993) longitudinal research that began by following a group of American children from their pre-adolescent years in the Great Depression through the middle age, and which traced the effects of social deprivation in early life upon relationships, careers, lifestyles and personalities. Preuss-Lausitz et. al. (1983) have presented a series of similarly conceptualised studies in looking at succeeding generations of German children growing up in the immediate post-war years, the 'economic miracle' years of the 1960s and the years after the 1973 'OPEC oil shock'. Whilst studies such as these are, in some sense, anticipatory, their rationale does not lie in the analysis of

16

J. Qvortrup

individuals in the narrow sense. The important questions asked, and which must be of great interest to a sociology of childhood, are in which ways generations or cohorts of children are influenced by macro-historical events like depressions, wars, and other largescale societal transformations. The new UNICEF (1993 and 1994) study on the consequences of the transformation in Eastern Europe for children gives important answers at a socio-economic level, "for instance has the incidence of poverty risen dramatically in all these countries - and everywhere more among children than other age groups" (see UNICEF 1994). From a policy point of view, the findings of social historical studies cannot easily be translated into social or political action, but they do lend insight into the micro-macro relationship. In addition, they are important for contributing to an understanding of - in a Durkheimian sense - 'the elementary forms' of children's lives, i.e., what are the continuities and discontinuities in the historical development of childhood: on the one hand, a number of things may change completely, on the other, sometimes only the forms may have changed. Social history has considerable heuristic value for any contemporary social scientific research, of this we may be quite certain.

Generalisation and specification In principle, we should be in a much better position to describe and understand contemporary childhood than past childhood. This potentially better position is apparently causing difficulties; it seems to be much harder to come to agreements about what childhood is like today than how childhood used to be. Put another way: we are much more inclined to generalise about childhood in the past (or, indeed, in the future) than about contemporary childhood. The reason for our reluctance to generalise current conditions is probably that we are much closer to contemporary childhood than to historical or future childhoods. While we are more or less obliged to generalise about the past and the future and are bound to avail ourselves of merely their main contours and architecture, we hesitate to generalise about any present phenomenon, and thus also about childhood. The contemporary world is seen as complex, differentiated and multifaceted, so that researchers are opposed to talking about childhood in the singular, on the grounds that children lead very different lives - in principle, as many different lives as there are children. Once more, this is as trivial a truth as it is an important one. Modern society has become very complex. But does this mean that the differences between children outweigh that which they have in common? If so, our research prospects look gloomy. Let me give an example. I do not know why, but one is often encouraged, when asked to talk or write about childhood, not to forget the gender perspective. Perhaps because we have, in the mentioned sense, to do with two different childhoods. The reason why I usually refuse to take this issue up is, that - if given high priority - it is counterproductive to what I see as the main aim to focus on childhood as such. To think from the outset in terms of girl-

Childhood in Europe: a New Field of Social Research

17

children and boy-children would already be a specification of what is common to childhood per se, without having clarified what that is. Gender is neither less nor more relevant - as a specification - than for instance social class, urbanisation, ethnicity or any other factor of that order. In my view it is extremely important to avoid the temptation to sacrifice the commonness of childhood or the common experiences of children in a given context or a given society to the advantage of certain perspectives which make differences within the childhood population of paramount importance. If one is interested in differences between girls and boys, then it is primarily a gender question; this is a relevant perspective, but if the relationship to other generations is the main focus, gender must remain second to that, i.e. as one way of specifying the more general nature of childhood. A focus on childhood in its own right is likely to suggest that girls and boys - as children - have quite a lot in common, which at the same time differentiates them from other generational segments of society. Whether it is more or less, cannot so easily be ascertained, neither is it really important. The American psychiatrist Robert Coles in the same way once contended that "in a sense white and Negro children have more in common with each other than with their parents" (Coles 1967, 322); this was of course not a denial of the importance of race relations, but rather a way of saying that even this important factor must methodologically take second place to a generational perspective, if and when it has been decided that it is childhood that lies in the centre of analysis. In other words: any specification of children's conditions is important and necessary to make, but it should be done with a view to what is common to children as a generational segment of society. The decisive point is, however, that we do not turn this question into a methodological either-or. Rather we should capitalise these different perspectives for our research. Each child is unique; any group of children - and that may well be boys or girls - in some respects lives in particular circumstances pertaining to this very group, depending on socio-economic background, environmental conditions, parental attitudes etc. At the same time each cohort or generation of children in a given society has something in common which allows us to make statements about childhood in a given society. In my view, childhood research must, just as all research, aim to generalise, whether by induction or by deduction. It is immaterial whether generalisation is achieved by qualitative, quantitative, empirical or theoretical methods. What counts is, firstly, to accept that movements are allowed both from the general to the particular and vice versa; secondly, that one aims at generalisations with the purpose of achieving insights in the universalities of childhood conditions; and, thirdly, to exploit one's general knowledge with the aim of applying it in the concrete context in which children live. At first glance, it might well appear that the contemporary sociology of childhood offers more concrete, empirical studies from which to generalise inductively than it possesses a well-developed theoretical base from which to engage in deductive research and analysis. But in reality, this it not so: social historical and cultural anthropological studies provide us with quite an impressive resource, and at a rather high level of generalisation. Aries (op. cit.) is clearly describing historical "processes of integration and

18

J. Qvortrup

segregation patterns". DeMause (op. cit), on the other hand, adopts a more positive perspective on the consequences of historical change for children, but he too, proposes "patterns of childcare practices in the form of a chronological typology". Whichever of the two positions one may personally favour - mine is certainly not that of deMause, for example - and regardless of the methodological flaws their work may contain, their writing remains interesting because they produce 'heuristically fruitful history', the point I am trying to make here can perhaps be usefully illustrated by taking a well-known quotation in which the term 'religion' is replaced with the term 'childhood': If it is useful to know what a certain particular [childhood] consists in, it is still more important to know what childhood in general is ... Since all [childhoods] can be compared to each other and since all are species of the same class, there are necessarily many elements which are common to all. We do not mean to speak simply of the outward and visual characteristics which they all have equally, and which make it possible to give them a provisional definition from the very outset of our researches; the discovery of these apparent signs is relatively easy, for the observation which it demands does not go beneath the surface of things. But these external resemblances suppose others which are profound (see Durkheim 1961, 16-17).

I would agree with Durkheim. It is, indeed, these profound resemblances we should be looking for; at the same time it goes without saying that such deep insight can be obtained only if one has a plurality of studies about childhoods under particular circumstances.

Conclusions This contribution has chosen to approach the development and characteristics of the social scientific study of childhood primarily from a methodological point of view. Neither the approach taken, nor the conclusions reached, nor the specification of the direction in which it is desirable to move, will find full or universal agreement amongst those actively involved in the field - nor is such consensus necessary to proceed further. Yet, I think that most active researchers in the field do agree about at least three requirements: firstly, that the focus must be on children or childhood; secondly, that this focus must exhibit features that are non-developmental in the sense of privileging the characterisation of some kind of collectivity of children - be that at a specific level or a general societal level; and thirdly, such research should - directly or indirectly - relate to some reference group, be that along a generational dimension or some other comparative category. Substantially speaking, theories, that characterise childhood inter alia in terms of a minority group, marginalisation, paternalisation (Qvortrup 1994), institutionalisation, or Verhauslichung (Zinnecker 1990a) are promising and fruitful since they may be organically conceived of in terms of more general theories about societal modernisation. This would therefore also stress one last important point, namely that, in my view, children or childhood should not be regarded as something separate from society, as something

Childhood in Europe: a New Field of Social Research

19

mysterious, as were they an ontologically different species. Children are human beings, and not merely human becomings; they cannot be seen as 'persons-to-be' who must be integrated into society. If childhood is, then, an integral part of society, it is equally a legitimate and desirable subject of social scientific inquiry in the same fundamental manner as is any other social phenomenon.

European Youth Research: Tour de Force or Turmbau zu Babel? Lynne Chisholm

Prologue Comparative research is nothing new, albeit an uncommon subspecies in youth studies. This is partly because, with some notable and historically specific exceptions, youth studies itself has not been a 'big time' specialism within individual national and linguistic academic communities. But more generally, with the exception of social anthropology, whose original raison d'être lay in the study of the Other, those specialising in comparative perspectives - whatever their discipline or topic - have typically lived rather separate academic existences, in some cases forming recognised sub-disciplines, as in comparative education. Classically, comparative research in education and social science has taken the form of comparisons between societies and cultures as social systems. However, the term 'comparison' has not necessarily meant that different systems are directly set against each other and compared. It has equally meant trying to make sense of a society or culture from the outside, and then attempting to convey the essentials to the researcher's indigenous audience - using a conceptual and normative language with which the audience is familiar. In other words, comparative studies are typically engaged in a translation exercise. The difficulties and discontinuities that can result are at least as taxing and misleading as those that arise in translating between languages. Apart from simple academic and human curiosity, the reasons for doing comparative research have generally been to use the information and insights gained for one's own purposes: deeper understanding of one's own society and culture by accessing external points of reference; improving the workings of one's own society and culture by learning or borrowing from others; and positioning or ranking one's own society and culture against others in relation to dimensions of development and performance. Without negating their potential and genuine utility, it is clear that it is self-interest that dominates these aims - if not automatically that of the researchers involved, then very likely that of their flinders and of those who may use their findings for policymaking purposes (see Chisholm 1994a). Taken together, these characteristics of comparative research - a specialism emerging from and dominated by the concerns and interests of western Euro-American societies

22

L. Chisholm

and cultures - point unmistakably to dangers of ethnocentrism and decontextualisation. These dangers have by no means escaped the attention of contemporary comparative researchers, with the result that perspectives are increasingly guided by relativist principles: beyond crude macro-level indicators, societies and cultures are fundamentally non-comparable and certainly cannot be evaluated against each other. Whilst these principles may be laudable, they pose severe obstacles in the search for practical solutions to the challenges of comparative research. All too often, we find ourselves with a procession of isolated cases (youth in X, youth in Y, youth in Z ...) that are each interesting in themselves, but which have little apparent connection with each other rather like the old-fashioned displays of disparate cultural artefacts in museums with which bemused visitors were presented. Whatever European youth research may become, it emphatically cannot follow this Turmbau zu Babel logic. But what is, or might be, European youth research? This is the question I want to pursue here.

Mise en scene The first five years of the "New Europe' are now contemporary history. The more or less unforeseen collapse of political barriers between east and west burst into what had, in the mid-1980s, begun as a fairly uncontroversial trajectory into the post-1992 European Union. The upswing of optimism about the prospects for positive economic and social reconstruction in a rejuvenated and humanitarian European 'kinship network' rapidly disintegrated into despondency in the face of intergroup intolerance, armed conflicts and deep economic recession. Public opinion surveys on attitudes towards Europe and its future have mirrored this rapid shift of mood towards pessimism. Presently, discourse about Europe typically uses a language of crisis. Our information about young people's views remains slim and patchy in these respects, but that which is available suggests that a clear majority of young Europeans everywhere support the idea of an open and integrated Europe - but on the condition that this be a polity and society founded on solidarity, justice and tolerance, both within its own borders and in its relationships with the Third World. In practice, however, many young people are disillusioned and sceptical about Europe's future, because - in their view quite contrary values underly European integration policies and practices, in particular as exemplified by the EU. This tension between ideals and realities, hopes and fears, expresses itself particularly strongly amongst eastern European youth (for example, see Chisholm 1993a). Young people's 'idealism' has always been discounted by older generations as a passing phase - and regularly judged as dangerous by those holding political power and authority. Disregarding the validity or otherwise of such accounts, 'youth' patently acts as a symbolic vessel for positive and (even more so) negative projections. Ideologically, youth embodies problems and conflicts (and perhaps desires) originating quite outside young

European Youth Research: Tour de Force or Turmbau zu Babel?

23

people's scope of action and influence. Accounting for structural unemployment in western economies is the example that immediately springs to mind: young people are themselves responsible for their 'unemployability', either because they do not hold appropriate qualifications and competences or because they no longer subscribe to dominant work ethics. Political and intellectual discourse about the resurgence of nationalism and neo-fascist violence in early 1990s Europe is a highly topical further example. Young people are portrayed as the vanguard of these unsavoury developments; feverish activity surrounds pinpointing the characteristics of the typical miscreant and devising social and educational prevention programmes. Yet young neo-fascists are a tiny minority of young people (who are not necessarily typically the socially dispossessed) and nationalist sentiments are more widespread amongst older generations (as any recent analysis of voting patterns will demonstrate). Right-wing opinions and neo-fascist violence are serious issues for youth research and policy, but they are still more serious issues in relation to overall social and political patterns and trends. It is not, after all, young people who found right-wing political parties and who make inflammatory public pronouncements as politicians about immigration or national sovereignty. They are seldom in a position - financially or occupationally - to do either. It remains the case that young people are crucial to any society's future and that the shaping of the New Europe - whatever lines it pursues - has significant implications for the profiles of chances and risks in young Europeans' lives and futures. Some four years ago I opened a box file under the label 'European youth research'. Its contents were made up of a motley selection of research and policy papers and documents that had accumulated rapidly since the late 1980s, when the notion of a New Europe began to surface into people's thinking and writing. The single box file has now become four and the first major subdivisions have appeared: education and work; culture, society and politics; theoretical contributions to defining the field and its concerns; and sets of conference papers. Their contents do not primarily include essays about young people in country X or Y, nor studies that compare (for example) the young unemployed in region A with region B. These are in many other box files: they comprise a fund of essential input into European youth research, but, in most cases, their purposes and problematics are differently contoured. In other words, 'Europeanisation processes' as social change, together with their implications for the social construction of youth and young people's lives, is the guiding problematic for European youth research, in which multidimensionality and interrelatedness structure analytic perspectives (Chisholm 1993b). In many ways, these definitional elements remain programmatic, i.e., imperfectly understood and hardly at all realised in research practice, but they do comprise a recognisable consensus about the way forward (du Bois-Reymond and Hubner-Funk 1992). This fledgling is equally committed to supporting an organic triangle between research, policy and practice, in which no element uncritically services or is automatically subordinate to another (Chisholm and Bergeret 1991). Rather, symmetrical connections between all three are not

24

L. Chisholm

only theoretically productive but also politically essential and socially effective. It should be clear that European youth research is a project, still very much on the drawing board, the significant rise in research and policy interest over the past five years notwithstanding.

Stage sets and conventions The sequence and symbolisms of the sets that accompany theatre performance are material to interpretation, but it is the stage action that captures the foreground of audience attention and concern. In much the same way, theories of social change are of considerable importance for framing and ordering our understandings of the social construction of young people's lives, but it is the latter rather than the former with which we busy ourselves. The question of the relationship between 'social change' and 'youth' releases too many genies from the lamps: which is representing or responding to which? What is generationally ephemeral, what is 'really' changing and for whom, where? However, simply placing the literatures on 'social change' and 'youth' consciously against each other points up a curious disjunction. Discussion about the social construction of youth is inclined to assume particular and 'domestic' perspectives on social change and to ask questions accordingly, whereas debates on social change range across a global spectrum and virtually never consider the problematic of youth. Theories of social change remain dominated by the problematic of development, even where the developmentalism of classical organic and systems models has been decisively rejected (see Sztompka 1993 and Alexander 1994 for critical overviews of the field). Taking globalisation processes as the thematic focus, contemporary theorists' guilt-ridden or resistance-laden gaze is mesmerised by the relationships between the West and the Rest (see Featherstone 1990). Here, consideration of the problematics of contemporary social change within the West look ashamedly parochial and self-interested, whereas European peripheries are either implicitly assimilated into the West or represent a case study in miniature of global relations. But this does not mean that globalisation theory has little to offer to the theoretical development of European youth research. The cultural anthropologist Ulf Hannerz (1990, 1991) uses the term 'global ecumene' to describe a world suffused with cultural interaction, interpénétration and exchange. The temporally and spatially bounded communities of the social past created and recreated 'traditional' cultures on the basis of face-to-face communication and experience. In contrast, 'modern' cultures are spatially and temporally autonomous and unbounded; much communication and experience occurs through the medium of depersonalised technologies. The 'cultural flows' that result are neither automatically (or even typically) reciprocal nor are they symmetrical. Rather, cultural flows move around a hierarchical complex of centre-periphery clusters to form a pluralistic but unbalanced conglomerate.

European Youth Research: Tour de Force or Turmbau zu Babel?

25

The twinned processes of pluralisation and polarisation that have been discussed by a number of writers engaged in comparative youth research (as in, for example, Zinnecker's [1991a] 'selective modernisation' thesis) find obvious points of contact with this formulation. Current writing on the social construction of youth, on the other hand, is increasingly guided by varieties of contemporary modernisation theories that problematise the cultural transition between modernity and post-modernity and/or the shift between advanced industrial and post-industrial (post-Fordist) economies and societies (as in Galland and Cavalli

1993; Chisholm

1995). These indigenous Euro-American concerns

appear

relatively seldom in the wider literature on social change. Yet at the same time, youth research texts from different parts of Europe can be read not only as reports on growing up under a given set of circumstances but also as cultural representations of 'national' perceptions and preoccupations, so that taken together, one might be forgiven for concluding that a mutually comprehensible intellectual discourse for considering youth in Europe does not meaningfully exist (Liebau and Chisholm 1993).

Redesigning the sets In a variety of ways, contemporary social theory underscores the significance of contingency, openness and agency over against the continuing importance of structures, traditions and circumstances. Social reality is conceptualised less insistently as a set of bounded systems, more frequently as fluid networks of human and organisational relations. An English language signifier of this shift in perspective towards the diachronic is the increased use of the continuous present, as in growing up in Europe. It is this multidimensional and relational quality of social organisation and experience in contemporary Europe to which Giddens (1991) refers in his description and analysis of 'high' or 'late' modernity (but also see Beck, Giddens and Lash [1994] on reflexive modernisation). Late modernity is defined by four interrelated elements. Firstly,

people must learn to trust impersonal and anonymous abstract systems of

social organisation whose operating principles are no longer immediately transparent in the structuring of everyday life. Secondly,

however, people must come to terms with living in a universalised risk

culture in which they can neither reliably predict the outcomes of their own actions nor can they protect themselves from the consequences of events over which they have no control. Higher levels of education and the communications explosion also mean that people are more aware of the risks to which they are exposed and of the limits of technical expertise in controlling these. Thirdly and for all these reasons, social life is experienced as increasingly erratic and unpredictable - and therefore as opaqueness, but in a context of continued differentiation and polarisation of life chances and values. The responsibility for finding and anchoring one's self-within-society thus becomes ever more individualised.

26

L. Chisholm

Finally, economic, political and social networks spill across established community and nation-state boundaries, i.e., globalisation processes take hold, which in turn generate pressures for local and regional autonomy and the reaffirmation of cultural identity. The crucial theoretical point, however, is that of trying to visualise and understand relational modalities between these elements: between near/far, then/now/in future, continuities/discontinuities, fragmentation/homogenisation, etc.: Globalisation concerns the intersection of presence and absence, the interlacing of social events and social relations 'at distance' with local contextualities. (...) It has become commonplace to claim that modernity fragments, dissociates. (...) Yet the unifying features of modern institutions are just as central to modernity (...) as the disaggregating ones. (Giddens 1991, 21, 27)

The continuities between non-Marxist social theory (here represented by Giddens) and neo-Marxist/post-structuralist cultural studies are of some interest in underlining the evident centrality of these kinds of ideas to designating appropriate theoretical frameworks for developing European youth research. Stuart Hall (1991a,b) argues, for example, that changing configurations of the global/local are producing transformations of subjectivities and their cultural positionings. Global mass culture, centred in the West, exercises an intentionally incomplete homogenisation which stage-manages cultural independence. It is a régime of difference, contextualised within a pleasure principle of creating and sampling cultural diversities, that today comprises the logic of cultural and economic production and reproduction. The old collective identities lent by class, gender, nation, race and 'western culture' no longer 'work' as they used to do. Instead, subjectivities are regulated by 'technologies of the self in which identity is lived through difference - beyond a certain point, globalisation processes simply cannot develop further without learning to work through specificities and differences: To be at the leading edge of modern capitalism is to eat fifteen different cuisines in any one week, not to eat [roast beef every Sunday], (...) You take [the world] in as you go by, all in one, living with difference, wondering at pluralism, this ... over-concentrated form of economic power which lives culturally through distance and which is constantly teasing itself with the pleasures of the transgressive Other. (...) The régime I am talking about does not have [the old Protestant Ethic] pain/pleasure principle built into it. It is pleasure endlessly. (...) It's clear, of course, that when I speak about the exotic cuisine, they are not eating [it] in Calcutta. They're eating it in Manhattan. So (...) I am talking about a process of profound unevenness. (Hall 1991a, 31, 33)

The agenda of an intercultural and transnational European youth research would appear, on these readings, to set itself the following sorts of questions: Firstly, European cultures and societies are dynamic and open networks living in sensitive interdependence. How can we begin to make sense of the complexities and relate these to the social constructing of youth in Europe? These are theoretical and methodological questions that have hardly begun to be systematically examined. Secondly, mutual interrogation of insider and outsider perspectives is a prerequisite of interpretational adequacy in a field that is, by definition, intercultural. In principle, the very fluidity and mobility that characterises social organisation and experience in

European Youth Research: Tour de Force or Turmbau zu Babel?

27

contemporary Europe ought to foster culturally interrogative skills. But these competences are not well-developed, as all of us who have attempted comparative and intercultural research know. These are educational questions, of considerable significance for being able to do European youth research productively, and they have only recently begun to draw serious attention on the part of European-level institutions, despite the multiplication of researcher exchange programmes. Thirdly, the patternings of life chance/risk profiles, of pluralisation and polarisation processes, are no longer issues that can be satisfactorily understood country for country, in the comparison between nation-states or by comparisons between regions within one set of national borders. How can we describe these patterns accurately and meaningfully? These are, above all, empirical questions (that also have policy-making significance). Not surprisingly, it is the collation of empirical material - albeit of highly diverse kinds and serving divergent purposes - that seems to be most plentiful in and around the European youth research scene.

Is there a plot? The above suggests that in one sense, the data is running ahead of the theory - in other words, it is accumulating but following no evident or intentional plot. This makes the task of giving an overview of the concerns and directions of the European youth research programmatic a rather difficult one. On the other hand, if we can ignore field content and focus on its structuring then the task becomes more manageable. In other words, we let the theory - such as it presently is - run ahead of the data. Figure 1 (overleaf) shows one way of doing so, and it allows us to map existing examples onto the project. The elements are simple and appear at several points in the preceding discussion. The vertical axis positions outsider and insider perspectives at its poles. These are inevitable and essential first steps and components in developing the mutually interrogative perspectives of intercultural research, which are placed at the midpoint of the axis. The horizontal axis adopts the continuum between additive-descriptive and expandedintegrative approaches to the European youth research project specified by du BoisReymond and Hubner-Funk (op. cit.). Additive-descriptive approaches simply put together separately devised and conducted pieces of research on the discrete procession model referred to at the outset of this paper. Expanded-integrative approaches devise and conduct research from A to Z in transnational teams and anchor their perspectives in relational, intercultural analyses. Between the two poles there are any number of interim staging posts. Finally, the ideally organic triangle between theory/research, policy and practice marks a space within which European youth studies are programmatically embedded, whereby individual examples will occupy different corners depending on their origins and purposes. The two curves leading to the triangle represent trajectories into the triangle.

28

L. Chisholm

Figure 1: European youth research: a structuring programmatic

At the practice corner of the triangle we find applied and action research and evaluation directed towards reflection on and improvement of professional practice in transnational youth work and education (for example, Oberste-Lehn and Wende 1990; Otten and Treuheit 1994). There is already a lively tradition and an established literature in this field, although it has found little recognition or resonance within 'academic' youth research to date. The basis for this work lies in the youth exchange and mobility programmes offered by a wide range of public and private agencies. The Council of Europe's European Youth Centre, the EU's 'Youth for Europe 1 scheme and the OFAJ/DFJW ( O f f i c e Franco-Allemandpour la Jeunesse/Deutsch-Franzdsisches Jugendwerk) are particularly well-known examples. The experiences and reflections of those engaged in this work - including the participants themselves - offer a rich fund of information about young people's values, attitudes and responses in intercultural settings and about educational strategies for fostering cultural competence and intercultural tolerance. Policy research on youth affairs - the policy corner of the triangle - is a much more sparsely populated terrain. This has to do with the usually low profile of youth affairs as a policy portfolio in western European nation-states (much less so in eastern European state socialist polities - see here Kovacheva and Wallace 1994). It is therefore particularly difficult to generate policy research on youth affairs at the European level, although matters are now slowly improving (see Vanandruel 1995; Chisholm 1994b). Policy research responds inevitably to political and policy-making concerns and priorities, so

29

European Youth Research: Tour de Force or Turmbau zu Babel?

that it is unsurprising to find that this work currently focuses on transitions between education, training and work and on young people's social and political participation. The theory corner of the triangle remains, in the narrow sense of the term, very thinly populated. The most frequent topic for theoretical reflection is that of identity, spurred into renewed action following the appearance in political discourse of the term 'European identity'. Much of this literature, however, whilst of considerable relevance to young people, is not specific to their circumstances and orientations (for example, Roberts 1992). Work which is focused upon young Europeans is beginning to appear (for example, Hiibner-Funk 1991, OFAJ/DFJW 1992), but it is more frequently based on empirical research on young people's values as such (for example: Biorcio and Segatti 1992) than on their orientations towards 'Europe' (but see Chisholm, du Bois-Reymond and Coffield 1995). This initial description of three overlapping terrains within the European youth research triangle has not explicitly considered the curved lines of development that lead into it. In reality, most of what we have begun to call 'European youth research' does not fall at the expanded-integrative end of the continuum shown in Figure 1. It falls somewhere in the space between and along the curves, so that the triangle is really made up of a series of dynamic triangles positioned right across the space enclosed by the axes. Figure 2 (below) reproduces this space, now superimposed with oval shapes labelled A, B and C, which represent differently composed 'patches' in the process of emergence of the European youth research field itself. Figure 2: European youth research: a descriptive

patchwork

OUTSIDER PERSPECTIVE

INTERROGATED PERSPECTIVE

INSIDER PERSPECTIVE ADDITIVE DESCRIPTIVE

EXPANDED INTEGRATIVE

30

L. Chisholm

Patch A holds the bulk of youth research per se, most of which is designed within and for national-cultural and linguistic-cultural professional communities. In other words, cultural insiders are writing, in the first instance, for cultural insiders; sometimes the work reaches a wider audience, making most impact when it is translated. The work of the 1970s British youth cultural studies school, and especially that of Paul Willis (1979, 1990), is a good example. Translations of academic work are seldom - and into English extremely seldom. This results not only in a sort of intellectual imperialism of Anglo-American perspectives but also in their own splendid isolationism. Studies produced within and for the 'home' field are self-evidently an essential foundation for European youth research, but inevitably, much of this work never sees the transnational light of day. Additionally, it is usually difficult to extend their relevance and usefulness beyond the additive-descriptive end of the European youth research continuum, since such work is not theoretically, methodologically or empirically designed to be interculturally communicative or responsive. Placed together, they tend to produce the discrete procession model of comparative research, and it must be said that this is what international conferences on youth studies have so far largely produced (for example: Bendit, Mauger and von WolfFersdorfer 1993; Büchner and Krüger 1991; Chisholm, Büchner, Krüger and Brown 1990; Hazekamp, Meeus and te Poel 1987). Patch B holds studies looking at aspects of young people's lives in a single society or culture and which are conducted from the perspective of the cultural outsider (for example, a Rumanian youth researcher studies the young French or vice-versa). This is classic social anthropology territory, in which the audience is almost always the home field of the researchers themselves, not those studied. Variations of this model include studies in which bilateral or multilateral projects exchange or specifically seek out researchers with 'insider knowledge' of the 'other side' (for example: the Anglo-German study of school-work transitions reported in Bynner and Roberts 1991). Examples of transcultural and multilingual youth researchers who work in a variety of settings and languages are extremely seldom. This means that European youth research has but a slim archive of what might be called 'Euro-indigenous ethnography' parallel to that longestablished in the USA. There are certainly ethnographic youth studies, but there are practically no examples of such where the researcher comes from a different nationalcultural and language community than those who are the subject of study. Patch C, of course, is defined by more significant degrees of integration and interrogation (and it should be clear that patches A and B in fact merge into C). Examples range from simple statistical surveys (as in the Commission of the European Communities' Young Europeans series) through classic bilateral/multilateral research and analyses (as in the Melzer, Lukowski and Schmidt 1991 and Melzer, Heitmeyer, Liegle and Zinnecker 1991 collections of studies on East and West German, Soviet, Polish andHungarian youth) to transnational oriented analyses that address core issues relating to young people, social change and 'Europeanisation' processes (examples can be found in DJI 1993; Galland and Cavalli, op. cit.; Henschel and Thimmel 1993; and, in particular, CYRCE 1995). They are joined by special issues of journals on 'youth in Europe', which

European Youth Research: Tour de Force or Turmbau zu Babel?

31

generally present a range of insider viewpoints and integrate these both thematically and by overviews that aim to identify the key parallels and diversities that arise in the individual contributions (recent examples include: DJI Diskurs 0/90 and 2/92; Journal of

Education Policy 8/1/93; Mlâdez Spolecnost Stât 3/92; Youth and Policy 40/93 and 44/94). This third literature patch is small, but it is the driving edge of the field.

Too soon for dénouement From the vantage point of 1994, European youth research cannot match Olympic Lillehammer's integrative tour de force, at least not for the foreseeable future. A classic example of the post-modern existence, European youth researchers are more sure of the directions in which they do not wish to move rather than of the obvious ways forward. A standard way to close papers such as this one is to provide a list of topics that deserve particular research and policy attention in the coming years. Yet such lists already exist, and in the broad scheme of things, they all speak to changing patterns of chances and risks in young people's social and personal circumstances as they make the transition to adulthood and full citizenship; and they all raise questions about changing normative and value orientations amongst younger generations in relation to posited social and cultural change. In my view, an important underlying impulse for supporting the development of European youth research has less to do with pure academic interest in gathering interesting and complex material or in devising grand theories of European social change than with a commitment to democratic and humanitarian values of a similar order to those supported by the majority of young Europeans themselves. In common with many other commentators, Stuart Hall (1991a, 25) writes that the erosion of the nation-state, of national economies and of national cultural identities is a very complex and dangerous moment. When nation-states are in their ascendancy 'they gobble up everybody'; when they go into decline 'they take everybody down with them'. At this point, the danger of defensive regression into an aggressively racial form of national identity is only too immediate. European youth researchers' particular interest in questions of identity construction and education for cultural competence is directly linked to these concerns. At the same time, young people are inescapably caught across the widening chasm of the global versus the local. In an individualised and risk-laden world, they find themselves busily building crazy patchwork bridges between the two: crazy, because the patternbooks appear to have disappeared; patchworking, because pluralisation and fragmentation of the social construction of youth makes bricolage the rational option. This might be a highly positive scenario - it would seem that there is a market for skilled patchworkers of the kind described by a top civil servant at a recent European meeting: "Started a degree in theatre studies, gave it up half-way through, and now a multilingual globetrotter that's the kind of person we're looking to recruit - the last thing we want is straight people with law degrees!" Personnel recruitment programmes with profiles like this one

32

L. Chisholm

in mind face problems: for a whole variety of reasons, there are few suitable applicants. In seeking to link together research, policy and practice more productively, youth researchers across Europe do not regard finding ways of increasing the supply as their major priority, although this may be amongst the major motivations for European-level policy-making interest in the field of youth affairs. Many of the contributions to this volume make it clear that the economic, social and political circumstances of growing up in contemporary Europe do not, in the main, provide a secure basis for fostering young people's potential, independence and active citizenry. Why and how this is so, and what might be done to improve the quality of life of young people living in highly complex and diverse circumstances and cultural contexts, are challenges not only for social researchers, but equally for the shaping of a New Europe in which young people in the future will want to live.

The Value Orientations of Young Europeans Alessandro Cavalli

Are we still heading towards post-materialism? The debate on value orientations in Western Europe and North America has focused, in recent decades, on the 'materialism/post-materialism' dichotomy (Inglehart 1977, 1990; Abramson and Inglehart 1992). Apart from the conceptual and ideological shortcomings of Inglehart's analysis, this dichotomy has also been criticised because of its oversimplicity. In fact, it may be argued that there are different 'strains' of the post-materialist syndrome and, more specifically, that a 'conservative' version of post-materialism has probably been gaining momentum in recent years. In the past, studies on value orientations and value change among young people presented an optimistic view, on the whole, of the future. There have been - it is true some dissenting voices (Lash 1979) and some more cautious appraisals of the new cultural trends (Yankelovich 1981). The debate on post-materialism, however, gave the impression that post-industrial societies were heading towards a future with less ideological confrontation, less social, racial, sexual and ethnic discrimination, more democracy and participation, more affluence and welfare, more opportunities for selffulfilment and the development of individuality, more liberty for the individual and so on. I shall argue that the post-materialist hypothesis was far too optimistic and was in fact an ideology that fitted the extraordinary conditions of a historical period of unprecedented peace and affluence in the western world. This ideology stressed the illuminated side of the picture, which of course exists, but overlooked the shadows. If we look at the kind of value orientations emerging from the new forms of social participation and personal commitment in the 1970s and the 1980s, we can say that the values at stake are what could be called 'defensive values'. These kind of values do not reflect an ideal image of the future, something that has to be achieved through effort and sacrifice for the benefit of future generations; on the contrary, they reflect the concern and the fear for the possible loss of those values which were thought already to have been attained. Freedom, peace, welfare, clean air, soil and water are all 'endangered values' of this kind. Values and images of the future now run in the opposite direction: the future is not a 'promise' but a 'menace'. The 'menace' we face, in this values scenario, is, that what has already been achieved by our civilisation can again be lost. There are very interesting

36

A. Cavalli

data to support this argument. If we take the list of values which are more often chosen as 'worth sacrifice and risk-taking1 by the sample of young people interviewed in 1990 for the survey Young Europeans (Eurobarometer 34.2), we can see that they belong to this category of 'defensive values': peace, protection of the environment, human rights, freedom of opinion, and the war against poverty. Moreover, there are visible signs in most western European countries of growing disaffection among young people with the existing political institutions and the appearance of new movements, both regional and nationalist, which are hardly compatible with the political attitudes connected with post-materialism in its optimistic version. In any case, recent trends in the economy and the social adjustments to these trends have changed the cultural setting of the debate. New questions have emerged: How do people react to slow, or even, zero-growth forecasts? How do people behave in the face of diminishing incomes and shrinking consumption ? Now that young people are confronted with high levels of uncertainty and unpredictability, are they still pursuing self-realisation or are they returning to 'old' value orientations, such as security, family, provincialism, etc.? There is a lack of recent comparative data at European level to test this hypothesis empirically, but it is at least possible to formulate new questions to be answered by future research. Both the European Value Survey (Ashford and Timms 1992; Ester, Halman and de Moor 1993; Riffault 1994) and the already mentioned Young Europeans surveys present data collected in the late 1980s and early 1990s and it is possible to argue that the situation has probably changed considerably since then. Therefore, I will, in this paper, limit myself to exploring a series of considerations which could eventually be transformed into hypothetical propositions.

The impact of changes in the economy 1989 was not only the year of the fall of the Berlin Wall and of the final collapse of the idea that the economy can be rationally planned from above by a central authority. The collapse of socialism as an alternative social and economic system to capitalism does not necessarily mean the undisputed victory of the latter. It is true that market economies everywhere have proven more successful in providing societies with plenty of goods and in creating wealth for large strata of the population than any other economic system. However, faith in the spontaneous dynamics of the market and in the possibilities of unlimited economic growth have both been undermined in the eyes of public opinion in many western countries. The main factors involved here run as follows: Firstly, after a long period of continuous economic growth and rising personal incomes, the economic recession of the early 1990s has produced a decline in income levels and the need for a considerable percentage of the population to cut down consumption.

The Value Orientations of Young Europeans

37

For the first time in many years people were confronted with the problem of matching the 'rigidity' of needs with diminishing resources. When high standards of living have been achieved, people find it very difficult to go back to a less favourable situation. Secondly, the 'environmental crisis' has gained momentum in public consciousness. The idea that unlimited industrial growth may jeopardise the ecological equilibrium of our planet is increasingly common, particularly among the young. In almost every country, age is negatively correlated with concern for the environment, whereas the correlation with education is always strongly positive. But this concern can be interpreted as an indication of a widespread anxiety rather than confidence in the problem-solving capabilities of science and technology (Ester, Halman and de Moore 1993, 177 f). Moreover, the idea that the environmental crisis cannot be adequately tackled by nation-states alone and requires world-wide cooperation clashes with the powerlessness of international institutions. Thirdly, the increasing gap between rich and poor countries produces mixed feelings in wide strata of public opinion in the rich part of the world. On the one hand, the privileged have a sense of unease and "bad conscience" with regard to the unprivileged, on the other, the geographical mobility of poor populations is perceived as a threat at the frontiers of western countries. Fourthly, the transfer of production in technologically mature industries to Third World and eastern European countries is perceived as a cause of unemployment in advanced countries and creates the fear that world-wide competition will induce capital flows to shift towards low wage countries. In addition, public opinion is convinced (as are experts) that technological innovation in developed countries will destroy more old jobs than it creates new ones. As a matter of fact, the creation of new jobs in the service sector is minimal in high-tech industries and higher in industries requiring a low skilled work-force (such as tourism and catering). Fifthly, unemployment and job insecurity has become a major concern among young people almost everywhere in Europe; the number of young unemployed varies from country to country and, in each country, from region to region, but the fear of unemployment is higher in those areas where there was full employment before. Young people from lower social classes and with poor education, living in underdeveloped areas or in districts hit by de-industrialisation are more vulnerable to unemployment; they are likely to develop hostility towards immigrants and foreigners who are perceived as rivals for scarce jobs (but this does not mean that such hostility is restricted to the socially and economically disadvantaged). Even if young people still seek interesting jobs in which they can express their creativity and communicate with other people, the threat of unemployment makes them more eager to accept any work they can get and transfer their aspirations of selffulfilment to life outside the work-place.

38

A. Cavalli

Contradictory attitudes towards school and family These more recent changes noted above should of course be read within the broader framework of long term historical trends affecting both education and the family. The trend towards more schooling has slowed down but is continuing. Education, however, is no longer perceived by everybody as the main route to personal improvement and social mobility; many young people do not assign great value to education, but think they have to get an education. Having a good education is a prerequisite for a successful career, but it is by no means a guarantee of high professional achievement. Educational institutions are crowded with students whose motivation to learn is low and these institutions are proving incapable of dealing effectively with them. Many teachers, when they perceive the ineffectiveness of their efforts, begin to feel that they belong to a profession whose prestige is declining and transmit their 'depression' to their students. Moreover, high rates of youth unemployment and rapid technological change are likely to make obsolete the professional skills acquired through vocational education. While institutions for vocational education differ in the various countries, they all suffer from an inability to adapt to the local labour market and to the rapid changes in the skills required. Within the family, young people are caught in a contradictory situation: on the one hand, they want to become independent from their parents as soon as possible in order to build their own identity; on the other hand, they are forced to stay for longer in their parents' home since long educational paths, unfavourable labour-market conditions and high costs of living are making them economically more dependent upon their parents. Those in danger of becoming unemployed are forced to rely upon the family as a support structure, but students, too, (for example and especially in Italy and Germany) often extend their educational career beyond all reasonable limit, which creates difficulties in becoming economically independent from their parents once they have completed their education. There appears to be a somehow ambivalent attitude towards marriage and parenthood. Almost everywhere marriage and childbirth are postponed until later in life than was the case two or three decades ago. The fact that young men and women stay single for a long period is no longer considered a deviant pattern. Marriage, with the exception of Mediterranean countries, is no longer the only legitimate way to establish a new household. Many young men and women live together without getting married or before doing so. Divorce is also widely accepted and frequently practised. The idea that motherhood is the natural destiny of women is often rejected and in any case women want childbirth and childcare to be compatible with an occupational activity outside the household. Among the many factors explaining the overall decline of birthrates in western countries, the difficulty in adjusting gender roles within the family to the newly acquired position of women in the labour market is certainly of crucial importance.

The Value Orientations of Young Europeans

39

The changing political culture As already mentioned, changes in the international political scene are also having a considerable impact on young people's attitudes and values. For the first time since World War II, war has reappeared on European soil. The drama of Sarajevo has generated a sense of helplessness in the face of this kind of explosion of collective violence. Pacifist movements, which had traditionally equated pacifism with anti-imperialism, have proven unable to develop conceptual categories to explain and understand ethnic and nationalistic conflicts. International institutions, and in particular the European Union, have proven incapable of addressing the new challenges arising out of the disintegration of the Soviet Empire. The end of the confrontation between the two superpowers has generated a situation of less, and not more, security. In western Europe, the prospects for an accelerated process of economic and political integration are diminishing. Even if young people are more in favour of a united Europe than older generations, European public opinion no longer supports the integration process wholeheartedly. The outcomes of the referenda on approval of the Maastricht Treaty in France and Denmark and the results of opinion surveys elsewhere were explicit signals of a change in public mood. The slow-down in the process of unification has awakened nationalist tendencies (which had never disappeared completely) and at the same time made room for the rise of micro-nationalisms at sub-national level. Trust in political institutions and especially in traditional political parties has declined sharply; this process started during the 1980s with the appearance and spread of forms of 'single issue' oriented, non-institutionalised political participation. The emergence of 'new social movements' independently of traditional mass political parties was a feature of the entire decade. The de-legitimation of public institutions and of political elites has reached its peak in countries like Italy where the democratic dialectic between government and opposition has been frozen for many decades. 'Disenchantment' with traditional politics is accompanied by a rising interest in political matters. There are several indications that political apathy is no longer the dominant feature of the present generation. Should this renewed willingness to participate be unable to find an institutional outlet, it may well lead to a greater potential for political extremism. There are many other factors, operating to a lesser or greater degree in every country, which account for this 'legitimation crisis': the crisis of the welfare state (particularly in the sectors of social security and healthcare), the debate on the dangers of the poor becoming dependent upon welfare, the failure of educational institutions to create the conditions for equality of opportunities, the resistance on the part of the middle classes to greater fiscal pressure etc. All these factors contribute to the present delegitimation of politics and public administration in the eyes of the citizens. The failure of planned economies in eastern European countries (the collapse of'real socialist' regimes) has further increased mistrust towards state intervention in economic affairs and created the conditions for the rise of a

40

A. Cavalli

new kind of liberalism, which has little to do with the values of the liberal tradition and looks more like a reaction towards the state.

Satisfaction with the present and anxiety about the future Young people are to a very large extent satisfied with the kind of life they are living. They are happy with what they have got. According to the Eurobarometer study cited earlier, the proportion of European young men and women dissatisfied with their lives is highest in Portugal (21%) and lowest in the Netherlands (only 2%), the average for the 12 countries of the EU being 12%. Students are also largely satisfied with their education and young workers with their jobs. This general satisfaction with life, education and work may give us a false image of reality. Not only because, when asked about their satisfaction, do most people tend to give a positive image of their subjective state of mind, but also because dissatisfaction with present conditions is very often connected with expectations and hopes that the future will or could be better than the present. Dissatisfaction, in other words, is a prerequisite for the feeling that things can improve and that it is possible to act in order to bring this improvement about. It can be argued that the high degree of satisfaction hides a fundamental insecurity that the future will be or may be better than the present. Fear about the future may outweigh hope. A significant finding about the French sample in the European Value Survey (Riffault 1994, 255) was that the generation showing the highest degree of dissatisfaction is the one aged 40 to 55, i.e., those who lived their youth years in the late 1960s and early 1070s, the so-called '68-generation'. When asked what kind of problems are the main source of concern for the future, top of the list came unemployment, drug addiction and AIDS, followed by failure to get sufficient education and then housing. The fear that something might jeopardise the state of well-being and the health of the mind and body is resurfacing. What I am trying to say is that even the empirical findings for the 1980s could have been interpreted less optimistically. There is no doubt that, during the 1980s, Western societies were able to offer the new generations more education, more wealth, more freedom of expression, and more opportunities for the development of a culture of the self. What emerged during these years is a very peculiar value concept: a value is not something belonging to the sphere of the 'ought-to-be' (sollen) but to the sphere of the 'to be' (sein), it is not something that has to be sought after but something that has to be defended, it is not what you can attain but what you can lose. If this interpretation is to some extent correct, then the questions we have to ask today, in the mid-1990s, are different. As a matter of fact European societies now live in a radically different situation. The image of the 1990s looks quite different from that of the 1980s. Firstly, the self-reliance of the Western world is no longer supported by the confrontation with Communism; 'we-westerners' can no longer construct our collective identity by referring to the fact that we are better off (in terms of wealth, freedom and

The Value Orientations of Young Europeans

41

democracy) then the 'others'. Secondly, the present economic crisis can probably be overcome within the next few years, but unemployment is probably going to last much longer; some pessimists forecast that unemployment will be a permanent feature of advanced economies. Thirdly, war is again a feature of the landscape of the present; it is not the kind of war people feared in the past - an atomic war - but a very traditional, bloody, war, fought neither for global hegemony nor for imperialist aims, but for ethnic, religious and nationalistic reasons. Fourthly and lastly, democratic representative institutions are delegitimised in the eyes of a considerable percentage of the citizenry (particularly young people), whereas traditional left-right cleavages have lost at least some of their descriptive and predictive function. What kind of value changes can we expect now that the 'fears' of the 1980s have become reality? The pre-condition, the social pre-requisite of post-materialism was personal security, the feeling that the satisfaction of primary needs was not endangered. Can Europeans still rely on that expectation? Are our societies still able to promise greater opportunities for a large majority if not for everybody? Probably not. In this changed context we can also expect values to change, with some 'old' values prevailing again. But we are not on the road to a simple return to the past. Getting back to the post-materialist thesis, there is no doubt that many young men and women in western Europe strive for self-fulfilment in a peaceful and pluralistic society on the basis of a new kind of individualism and new forms of solidarity. One should not, however, overlook the presence of what we have called 'defensive values'. These values express a quest for security which cannot be interpreted restrictively just in terms of job security. A general feeling of insecurity pervades the Europe's young people today, and this may have unpredictable (and perhaps undesirable) political consequences. It is of course possible to live in insecurity, even to see insecurity as an opportunity for freedom and creativity; this, however, requires a personality structure and self-identity which today neither parents nor teachers are presently doing enough to foster. The danger, as the title of a famous book by Erich Fromm suggests, is that people may be tempted to 'escape from freedom'.

Growing Up in Three European Regions Peter Büchner, Manuela

du Bois-Reymond,

Heinz-Hermann

Krüger

Introduction The sociology of childhood does not treat children primarily as a homogeneous age group on their way to becoming adults. It looks at children as a structural component of society that is subject to social and cultural change and that exists in many variations and subgroupings according to given social, cultural and regional conditions. Our own research follows this kind of approach by analysing the impact of current modernisation and civilisation processes on the lives of present-day children in the context of a changing society. Childhood is thus no longer considered to be - sociologically speaking - just a phase of transition, but a permanent social category (Qvortrup 1993). Insisting on this new 'child focus1 is one step towards supporting recent efforts to establish a sociology of childhood (Chisholm et al. 1990; Qvortrup et al. 1994; du Bois-Reymond et al. 1994). This contribution uses information from an ongoing cross-cultural study that looks at the everyday lives of modern children in three different European regions (Western Germany, Eastern Germany, The Netherlands; another more detailed report will be found in several articles in: du Bois-Reymond, Diekstra, Hurrelmann and Peters 1995 in press). Theoretically, we assume that childhood, and especially the everyday lives of present-day children, are influenced by general trends towards modernisation and civilisation which are quite often neglected by the mainstream childhood research. In particular, we share the view that trends towards a pluralisation of family composition and new forms of living together with an individualisation of (lived) biographies and family lifestyles affect children's lives in different ways depending on historically specific socio-cultural conditions. The study as a whole places importance upon the following issues: - intra-family relationships (parent-child-relationships) against the background of changing family structures, family composition and intrafamily forms of living together; -processes of negotiation between parents and children regarding the rules and practices of everyday life inside and outside the family;

44

P. Buchner, M. du Bois-Reymond, H.-H. Kriiger

- child cultures; structure, range and organisation of the child's out-of-school activities including formal and informal social networks, and the significance of socio-cultural resources for the lives of children; - the transition from childhood to adolescence and especially the 'early of the life course of children (as discussed for adolescence

by Fuchs

biographisation'

1983);

- the 'social logic' (Thompson 1980) of the child's planning and decision making processes and the child's role as both conceded and imposed as an organiser of his/her own biography in the period of transition from childhood to adolescence; - the ways in which children plan and manage this biographical stage in their lives on the basis of different resources and different life chances. To this end we are using, as a first step, data collected in comprehensive case studies from the three regions in order to work out typologies about modes of parent-child relationships, variants of child cultures and patterns of biogaphisation. The next step will comprise a longitudinal investigation in which the 12-year-olds will be recontacted biannually to the age of 16. This part of the study will provide a comparative analysis of the specific modalities of growing up in different European regions in order to explore and uncover different coexisting degrees of'modernity' in contemporary children's lives. In this discussion we begin with a brief outline of the theoretical and methodological backgrounds to the study. This is followed by a category scheme that delineates indicators and profiles for the description of modernity in the children's everyday lives. We then consider some of our findings in the light of three typologies elaborated on the basis of our data. The concluding remarks address the question of how our results might be interpreted in the light of theories of modernisation in 'risk societies' with regard to inter-regional and cross-cultural similarities and differences.

Theoretical background The gains and costs of modernisation processes for the private life sphere seem to be of growing importance not only for research on the national level but also for inter-regional and cross-cultural studies. Our research is designed to uncover and describe elements of modernisation and social change as they affect the present-day lives of children in different national, social and cultural contexts. In doing so, we make use of theories interrelating structural change and social change with micro-level interaction (i.e. in the family or the peer group) as well as linking the notion of modernisation and civilisation with the level of specific cultural practices and habits of life. Beck (1992) analyses modern 'risk societies' in terms of contradictions between the production of (economic) resources (wealth) and the production of social risks in wealthy western industrialised societies, and specifically for the FRG. He is

Growing Up in Three European Regions

45

mainly concerned with the personal and social risks (costs) of modernisation, which he locates in the breakdown of traditional family and community support networks together with an increased emphasis on individualised rather than group-based lifeworlds. This means that individual interests, ambitions and commitments are more salient than class identity and collective (class) solidarity. Educational and labour market institutions stress individual success and encourage competitiveness, and this tendency is now extending significantly into private life. As a result of the (partial) subversion of traditional class distinctions based on status ascription and traditional life styles there is - according to Beck - a tendency towards individualisation in modern western societies. Individual status achievement is of growing importance and a diversification and individualisation of life styles, have been set in motion. These developments reflect both more opportunities and freedom of choice and new forms of risks and constraint. Children are affected by this trend towards individualisation of the life course in many ways: there seem to be more educational and leisure opportunities, but both markets simultaneously stress individual success and promote competitiveness. The pressure of competition inside the school is extended to out-of-school life: children are getting increasingly engaged in exclusive leisure activities, whereas 'leisure-careers' (Eckert et. al. 1990) are leading to high degrees of distinction between children's lives out of school. This implies that children must learn how to take responsibility for themselves at an early age. Life becomes a 'biographical project': to a certain extent, children are supposed to be able to seek their own pursuits independently of parental direction. They can buy their own leisure and must endeavour to secure the necessary resources. Whilst these developments offer children more room for choice and autonomous action, they also bring the permanent need for decision-making and for dealing with risks, stress, uncertainty, status unsecurity and they may entail the loss of traditional forms of family and neighbourhood support. This so-termed 'biographisation' of a child's life course implies the ability to reflect one's present and future life at an early age (Zinnecker 1990b). Children already participate in the rhetoric of discourses on identity and the life course (Ziehe and Stubenrauch 1982). Biographisation also includes processes of developing autonomy at an earlier age: children take part in deciding about the organisation of their lives inside and outside the family and educational institutions. All this might result in a situation where the child is overburdened with responsibility and stress. Apart from turning children into independent consuming citizens and making opportunities of information and orientation available to them early in their biography, the most prominent changing feature of an individualised childhood is probably the child's earlier acquisition of independence across an ever wider range of fields. Close family ties and the direct control of children's everyday lives through the parental home, are (partially) replaced by children's activities outside the family and by an increased orientation towards peer groups and leisure institutions. Examples of such areas of independence deciding individually what to buy, planning and managing space and time, the selection and shaping of leisure-careers, determining media consumption patterns,

46

P. Buchner, M. du Bois-Reymond, H.-H. Kriiger

displaying personal tastes, and choosing appropriate modes of communication with different groups of peers and social activities. Schools similarly require the exercise of decision-making, such as planning the week's work, engaging in project-oriented learning, choosing among options. Schooling further presupposes an independence in establishing social contacts which used to be bounded within traditional neighbourhoods. Thus, it would seem that, on the whole, there are fewer and fewer compulsory components in the typical childhood biographies. The children's lives are also marked by changes in material living conditions which are especially noticeable in the private sphere of family and gender relationships, partnerships and parenthood. These changes have been drawn together under the term destandardisation of the life course (Kohli 1986). Destandardisation is accompanied by a decreasing commitment/attachment to the normative traditions of family life and leisure activities, and by a strengthened orientation towards values of self-realisation as opposed to fulfilling obligations to others (Klages 1984). Individualisation processes thereby take root, offering both children and adults new perspectives of the possibilities for leading and planning one's life. Cautiously we might suppose that the determining and orientating role of paid employment upon the course and style of people's lives has also changed - both for women and for men, if in different ways. Especially women have, in the past decades, won a greater measure of independence and thus wider range of biographical options both inside and outside the family consequent upon extended and expanded educational and labour market participation. This development goes along with demographic shifts: family size is diminishing and onset of childbearing is delayed. Smaller families (fewer siblings) imply more intimacy, and more attention is given to the individual child. Children are no longer a biological 'inevitability' but, with effective contraceptives available, they are positively planned. Traditional family values such as the centrality of motherhood for women are weakened, giving women more room for living their own lives (principle of searching for selffulfillment). Marriages may be dissolved; more children grow up with stepfathers or stepmothers, stepbrothers or stepsisters. Against this background, other sources and kinds of biographic orientation increasingly compete with 'paid work' since the modern 'leisure class' (Veblen 1986) must be able to present more than just labour market relevant qualifications in order to be also up to date as a competitor on other markets such as the life style or leisure market. Thus, the biographic 'fixpoints' have shifted, and old familiar orientation points such as the prime importance of paid work have partly lost their significance. This new dynamism in the life course derives from the fact that vital parts of the process of childhood socialisation have become detached from traditional social contexts and are controlled by 'market based opportunity structures' (Kohli op. cit., 204), i.e. through a great number of child care and leisure arrangements outside the family. The more childhood in the (changing) family is eclipsed by influences and orientation patterns from outside the family (school, leisure activities, media etc.), the more independent the opportunity (and drive) to make up one's

Growing Up in Three European Regions

47

own mind, make one's own choice and take one's own decision will become, when deciding between alternative life courses or ways of life. This development is one element of the destandardisation of the life course against the background of plurality of forms and styles of life. The anticipation of own's future life course requires farsightedness - a central prerequisite for civilised behaviour as understood by Elias (1978/82). Long-term and long-established civilising processes demand the modern individual to be socially well controlled in the sense of keeping emotions under control in all manner of social situations and by developing the ability to exercise inner self-control. In sum, people are supposed to act in a 'civilised manner'. Dencik (1989 and in this volume), for example, has described the consequences of the civilising process for contemporary family life in Nordic societies as 'achievement societies' in the sense of McClelland's (1961) term. Many spheres of social life are characterised by market situations, such as the friendship market, the life style market, the consumer market, the social markets of kindergarten, school, and family, and later the labour or love market. Children are early confronted with such market situations and risk social failure (in the field of social interaction) unless they are able to exercise self-control, behave dispassionately and abstain from 'childishness' and 'regressive behaviour' in public arenas. Dencik translates Elias' concept of the ongoing civilising process into a process of quickening 'social acceleration', in which the prevailing ideals and norms governing the child's behaviour have shifted noticeably since the time when today's parents were children. Parents can no longer use the experience of their own upbringing as a model for their children's upbringing. Equally, children and parents are increasingly regarded as independent subjects, each with their own needs, rights and specific legal status; these developments affect the quality of parent-child relationships. Regarding children as individuals in their own right can be described as a trend towards both accepting and expecting the children's autonomy, self-regulation and self-control. Modern parents show more sensitivity to children's wants and needs but, at the same time, they take it for granted that a child is able to cope with given situations (PreussLausitz et al. 1990). This may open up new opportunities for children but it equally puts pressure on them to develop adequate social competences in order to meet modern day demands for (civilised) behaviour. Professional therapists may, on occasion, be brought in to assist the child to conform to expectation, especially in situations where they are expected to act autonomously (for example, in the case of parental divorce) but have not yet developed the adequate and appropriate coping strategies (Skolnick 1991). De Swaan (1982), similarly with reference to Elias' ideas, has postulated that parentchild relationships have changed over the last few decades from restrictive parental direction and child obedience to a pattern of recurrent negotiation between parents and children (cf. also Büchner 1983; 1985, 107ff; du Bois-Reymond 1994, 137ff). This has been accompanied by a shift in power balance of gender and generation relationships, which are becoming more relaxed and informalised (Wouters 1979). More equal power balances also give room for more options and less gender-bound life perspectives (Heinz

48

P. Buchner, M. du Bois-Reymond, H.-H. Kriiger

1991; Hagestadt 1991); these changes parallel the 'levelling out' of class differences typical of modern western welfare societies. Negotiation is a communication model which implies equal partners. Parent-child relationships are less guided by traditional norms and values (fixed standards of education and status-bound authority), more open for situation-specific and motivation-dependent discursive negotiation between family members. Influencing children's behaviour through (corporal) punishment (a premodern pattern) is replaced by confronting children with the consequences of their behaviour. Openly coercive measures to suppress behaviour unacceptable to parents are no longer a socially approved educational strategy. Not only education but human relationships in general are increasingly governed by a high degree of self-discipline, internalised forms of self-control and self-regulation (and far less by external forms of control by other people and agencies). The fear of not being able to keep up with other people or of losing social prestige acts as a strong incentive to live with all the implications of greater self-discipline (Elias 1969, 366). Gerhards (1988) has pointed out that recurrent discursive negotiation is a reflexive-communicative process requiring the verbalisation and cultural codification of emotions and action both on the part of parents and the part of children. One example of this are etiquette books and the explosion of advice columns (Krumrey 1984). However, not all social strata are affected by this culture of negotiation in the same way and at the same time. Culturally 'elite' social groups take the lead in establishing civilisatorily innovative norms and values, attempting to secure and maintain social distance and distinction vis-à-vis the lower status groups, who are continually engaged in a process of catching up from 'behind'. So, for example, the modern family culture of negotiation is adopted first by high status groups, and only later by low status groups. The results of these processes tend to be irreversible, although there is no doubt that the history of modernisation and civilisation is also characterised by cultural countermovements which can prompt a revival of premodern philosophies of parent-child relationships, as can be seen in the present European (and North American) discussion about more educational leadership (as opposed to partnership). Social and cultural modernisation trends cannot, therefore, be seen as linear in nature but must be rather conceived as an intermittent and contradictory process, so that synchronous/asynchronous developments and a number of different cultural patterns coexist. In addition, the different degrees of modernity to be found in children's lives do not reflect the impact of modernisation in a direct way. They rather show that it is necessary to conceptualise modernity as a multidimensional construct mirroring the complexity of cultural and social modernisation processes.

Methodological considerations The assumption that the balance of power between parents and children is getting closer to an equilibrium has methodological implications. It becomes necessary, for example, to

Growing Up in Three European Regions

49

study intergenerational relationships and interrelationships from the points of view of both parents and children. The more we focus on the child's life course and the more we look at how children organise their pathways between childhood and adolescence, the more we need to find ways of eliciting and interpreting children's own viewpoints as the core foundation of analysis. From a conventional methodological standpoint, children literally do not count (see Saporiti in this volume); they are neglected as independent subjects or as independent units of observation; they are mostly seen as members of a family, as future members of society, as persons represented by their guardians (Qvortrup 1993). If the quality of children's lives is considered to be more than just an element of their family's lives, we are well advised (methodologically speaking) to give children an opportunity to speak for themselves. This is the main reason we decided to conduct narrative (biographical) interviews with children as one important element of our field research. In doing so, we aim to recognise children as organisers of and independent actors in their own biographies and see this kind of technique as better-suited to achieving our purpose. We also agree with demands to advance more cross-cultural studies in the field of childhood research. "A theoretical framework requires a truly comparative study that takes account both of national differences and variations within nations. Just as we need a comparative social history of childhood, we must bring that history up to date by rich empirical comparative studies of the lives of children in contemporary society" (Furstenberg 1993, 423). The selection of the three European regions in East and West Germany and in The Netherlands was pragmatic in nature, bearing in mind the difficulties posed for conducting cross-cultural studies by poor research infrastructures and resource availability. Each of us (the authors) took over responsibility for the regions he or she knew well. Initially, we interviewed 106 twelve-year-old boys and girls and one of their parents, with numbers about equally divided between regions and by sex. Subsequently, we selected cases for closer study on the basis of 'theoretical sampling' (Glaser and Strauss 1967) in order to secure diverging and contrasting examples that cover a wide spectrum of modes of biographisation and social/cultural micro-contexts. We controlled for social origin and status in a general way by allocating the families to one of three groups (high, medium, low status) on the basis of both parents' educational and occupational achievements and positions. We also ensured that for each region, both urban and rural communities were represented: for West Germany, Frankfurt (city), Marburg (town) and rural Hessen (near to Marburg); for East Germany, Halle (city), Merseburg (town) and the Saalekreis (rural); for The Netherlands, Rotterdam (city), Leiden (town) and its surrounding rural area. The initial narrative (biographical) interviews with 12-year-old children and their parents were unstructured and immanent in nature (Schütze 1983). This means that an initial stimulus prompts children to talk about their lives, i.e. they are addressed as experts who can inform the (adult) interviewer. In the second phase the children are asked to go more into detail with regard to the topics they have raised up to this point'. Detailed synopses, verbatim records of the narrative passages identified as of central importance

50

P. Buchner, M. du Bois-Reymond, H.-H. Kriiger

and reports on the interview situation and interaction comprised the data base for analysis. Semi-structured interviews with the children and at least one parent followed in the second stage of the project. These interviews, which took place at their homes and at the same time, included questions about parent-child relations, forms of social control, intergenerational conflicts, educational methods, intra-family rights and duties, scopes of independence together with the child's everyday cultural practices and out-of-school activities and future life plans. The topics discussed were 'mirrored' in the sense that they deal with the children's everyday lives both from their own point of view and from that of a parent. The innovative element here is that concordance and discrepancy between the perspectives and accounts of parents and children can be registered and analysed. The interview data were supplemented by interviewer field notes on the situation and ambience of a family's home and life, including an inventary of the decor and contents of the child's own room. We also took photographs of the family, the family's house and the immediate neighbourhood. The interview data have been analysed in accordance with established procedures of focussed comparative content analysis (Muhlfeld et al. 1982; Lenz 1986 and Lamnek 1989), with the resulting group and individual portraits additionally compared and contrasted across and between the three regions. The analysis worked with a framework of emergent and successively refined key concepts, which in turn underly the construction of three typologies. These typologies address modes of negotiation between children and parents, variants of modern child cultures, and different patterns of biographisation of the life course of children. Profiles and indicators for the description of modernity In order to extract and classify different modes of parent-child relationships, variants of child cultures and patterns of biographisation of a child's life course we used the following profiles and indicators: I. Family profiles 1. Social status andfamily form dimensions Low, middle, high status; no/part-time/full-time employment of father/mother; number of children; housing situation (much/medium/little room; own room for child?); family composition (traditional form of family; single-parent family; divorced/new partner family; joint custody of the child; unmarried-partner family); type of school visited by the child 2. Family rules, degree of informalisation andfamily climate dimensions Fixed/flexible rules in daily relationships (pertaining to activities of everyday life; going out/returning home, bedtime, meal times, helping in household, TV time, control over homework, general standards of behaviour, patterns of conflict settlement); private sphere (not) guaranteedf(not) important; high/low degree of informalisation; parental sanctioning practices (arguing/negotiating vs. non-arguing/negotiating and/or physical punishment); warm/cold family climate; autonomy (not) granted with regard to clothing, hairstyling, hygiene etc.; gender-specific upbringing?

Growing Up in Three European Regions

51

3. Family value orientation dimensions High/low parents'expectations/control regarding school performance; norms expressed with regard to parental direction/child's autonomy: strong/weak; high/low degree of expected selfcontrol vs. control imposed from outside; upbringing norms (with fixed/flexible rules): dominance of duty and obediance vs. individuality and cooperation II. Activity

profiles

1. Spatial and temporal dimensions Infrastructure in the neighbourhood of the child's home; design & use of home incl. own room and quantity and quality of equipment; degree of dispersal of activity spheres; possibility of autonomous movement [incl. transport access]; temporal regulation/time use patterns 2. Activity dimensions Framework and range of activities inside/outside the home; participation programmes; family-based vs. institution-based activities; degree of mobility

in

activity

3. Social control dimensions Self-regulation vs. external control; self-determined vs. supervised; degree of planning/organisation; long-term perspective; degree of commitment to activities; security vs. insecurity of future perspectives; achievement pressure; sense of competence; satisfaction and pride vs. boredom with regard to activities; pressure/stress in the field of activities; individualised/collective styles/taste; instrumental/hedonistic activity orientation III. Social network

profiles

1. Social and friendship network dimensions Individualised vs. collective orientation/social relationships; status consciousness; autonomous (individualistic) forms of action vs. regulated by peers and/or parents; friendship pattern: family-based, peergroup-based, sports/hobby-based; neighbourhood-based vs. institution-based network 2. Motivational/orientational dimensions Thinking in terms of deferred/immediate gratification patterns, importance of social relations; self-perception: strong/weak IV. Biographisation

profiles

1. Competence for biographical reflection dimensions How does the child see itself situated in his/her surrounding world? How elaborate is the childCs narrative? How explicit is the child's self-concept and concept for his/her future? 2. Autonomy dimensions High/low degree of autonomy with regard to: organisation of leisure time and choice ofpeers, arrangement of own appearance (hair style, clothes), money and consumption, planning of (school/leisure) career 3. Family orientation dimensions Used/granted degree of autonomy; degree of help demanded in the household, time spent with family/with peers

52

P. Büchner, M. du Bois-Reymond, H.-H. Krüger

The degree of modernity in children's everyday lives can be described along the lines indicated by the above profile and indicator dimensions. The degree of modernity detectable in a child's life is determined by the scores reached in the respective fields of analysis. Thus we can find modes of parent-child relationships with different styles of upbringing, different degrees of informalisation and different degrees of self-responsibility and forms of autonomous action of the child. Such different family profiles can then be used to establish a typology of intra-family relationships. We can also examine to what degree present-day childhood is shaped by the modern 'leisure society' with its high demands for mobility and its market-like social relationships. To this end we look at different forms of child cultures (as indicated in children's activity profiles and social network profiles). And, finally, we can look at a child's biographisation profile which describes specific ways of transition from childhood into adolescence. Here we can compare how children plan, reflect and evaluate their life course in the light of the given socio-cultural settings of the three regions.

Relationships, cultures and biographisation as indicators of the modernisation of childhood Using these profiles and indicators outlined above, we were able to construct typologies able to depict the whole spectrum of our child respondents' present-day lives. We constructed an axis of modernity with two opposite poles representing the range between a highly modernised/individualised and a traditional variant of a child's everyday life. Between these two poles we found a number of partly or selectively modernised variants, i.e., in which 'lower' modernity ratings for one or more of the key profiles were characteristic. We examined the logic of every single case in respect of the scores found in the four profile dimensions before deciding where a case should be positioned along the modernity axis. Modernity, in the sense used here, is understood to be a complex structure of several interacting dimensions. In that final modernity scores, a particular case may be allocated to the 'highly modernised' category even if the sub-scores for the four profile dimensions vary to a certain extent (i.e. with a very high score on one dimension but only average or low scores on the others). The diagram below summarises the results of this analysis to date. Table 1: Degrees of modernity high

medium

low

parent-child relationship child culture

negotiating household

modernised command household mix of modern/ traditional forms

traditional command household mainly traditional forms

biographisation

individualised pattern

highly modern forms

partially individualised traditional pattern pattern

53

Growing Up in Three European Regions

These typologies have proved to be applicable to all three European regions, which indicates that processes of modernisation and civilisation have global effects on these regions despite the fact that inter-regional and cross-cultural differences do exist (as we discuss further below). A high degree of modernity in a child's life is characterised by high degrees of family negotiation, highly modern cultural practices and highly individualised

childhood

biographies. Negotiation-oriented households can be divided into two sub-types: the negotiating household directed by a clear set of rules (especially for the child) and the open negotiating household with rules adapted to the needs of all members of the family. In the first case, parents set up guiding rules both inside and outside the home to which children have to adhere. At the same time parents leave room for independent action and are willing to explain their demands and norms to their child. The child makes use of the room left for independent manoeuvre within the set of guiding rules and accepts it. A particular variant of this mode of parent-child relationship is 'overprotecting': parents give little autonomy to the child because of deep concern and insecurity about the child's welfare and well-being. The child acts defensively by renouncing, in many cases, the space granted for independent action in favour of a close relationship to his/her parents. The child accepts nolens volens parental restrictions. In open negotiation households, in contrast, children are granted, in accordance with given age norms, an optimal degree of autonomy with regard to arranging their own lives inside and outside the family. Parents feel obliged to seek consent and to give detailed reasons for their interactions with children, that is, parents generally try to abstain from enforcing a given rule against a child's will. Conflicts are extensively negotiated between the 'partners'. Such children make active use of the space they are accorded for independent manouevre and arrange everyday lives according to their own needs and in correspondence with the action strategies of their reference group. Highly modern cultural practices are indicated by: - a well-furnished/well-equipped

home/playroom; intensive use of the playroom for

individual activities and meetings with friends; easy transport access

(including

mothers!) to reach activity places; high degrees of mobility and autonomous movement on the part of the child; elaborated leisure timetable management, frequent absence from home (including staying overnight with friends); wide range of differentiated activities as well as intensity of participation in leisure programmes; willingness and capability to cover long distances to see friends or to attend leisure activities; elaborated time use; high degree of planning and organisation; long-term perspective; self-selected supervised and/or self-determined activity profile; peergroup-based

and/or sports-fhobby-based activity pattern;

- high degrees of (age-related) self-regulation; a culture of negotiation inside and outside the family (i.e. with peers or teachers); indirect and little control by parents during leisure time; more institutionalised forms of social control; weak gender activity differences;

54

P. Büchner, M. du Bois-Reymond, H.-H. Kriiger

- autonomously organisedfriendship networks; self-determined selection of social contacts; elaborated management of social contacts; self-determined social integration/segregation; activity-related social relations; low binding character of many social relationships; frequently changing friendship dyads; - individualised styles/tastes; high sense of competence; security of future perspective; status consciousness; deferred gratification pattern; 'action'-biased; high degrees of satisfaction and pride; low levels of stress/pressure; low/medium achievement pressure; strong self-perception. Highly modern cultural practices are often (but not exclusively) found in families with a high social status in urban (and sometimes rural) surroundings. Parental life style variables (Bourdieu 1982) seem to play an important role with regard to the existence of a child's specific cultural practices. An individualised way of becoming independent shows a high degree of competence for biographical reflection and a wish to become independent of family obligations such as helping in the household or joining in common family activities. Children of this type have already developed a fairly explicit concept of their future life. They appear autonomous and purposeful with regard to what they are doing in their day-to-day life. They are able to take care of themselves. Conflicts with their parents are negotiated on an equal rights basis. In many spheres of life, these children decide for themselves what to do (e. g. how to spend pocket money, what to do in leisure time, how to dress ...). Nevertheless these children say that they need emotional support as well as the parents' counselling and informational assistance, but they still insist on an early-won autonomy of which they are very proud. On the other hand, a low degree of modernity is mainly characterised by a traditional command household, traditional cultural practices and a low degree of biographisation of the life course. In such cases, parents, and especially the father, practice an authoritarian style of upbringing. Children are exposed to restrictive parental direction: a strict set of rules predominate inside the family to which the children must adhere. Depending on parents' mood, rules may sometimes be modified. But essentially, parents behave as if adults are right because they are adults, so that there is no discussion about rules, i.e. children are not encouraged to voice their opinion. Where rules are broken, parents react with punishment. The mother might mediate between father and children. The children struggle for concessions from their parents in order to gain more autonomous space. The family climate is dominated by traditional norms of morality ("it is not proper for a girl ..."). Little or no privacy at all is granted to the child, and the development of individual tastes (clothing, furnishing own room) is not encouraged. Traditional cultural practices are indicated by: - low or medium degrees of mobility on the part of the child; activity spheres near to the home; small own room or a shared room (which may however be well equipped with hifi, TV, and (especially for boys) computer; a 'street comer' orientation;

Growing Up in Three European Regions

55

unspecialised use of activity spheres; mainly outdoor orientation (especially for boys); low temporal planning level; family-based (often father-oriented) time management; clear weekday vs. weekend/holiday-differentiation; day-to-day orientation, low levels offormal organisation; traditional time use patterns andfamily-based time regulation; a narrow range of rather undifferentiated activities as well as low intensity ofparticipation in programmes (low degrees of institutionalised activities); low degrees of planning and organisation; short-term perspective; importance of family and neighbourhood networks; - low degrees of (age-related) self-regulation; culture of parental guidance; stronger gender differences; siblings (if existing) very importantfor orientation; direct forms of control by parents; high degree of social control vis-à-vis girls; fatherson/mother-daughter lines of activity patterns; - collective social/friendship networks; family-bound and neighbourhood-bound selection of social contacts; high binding character of relationships; importance of cliques; - characteristically low degrees of satisfaction and pride about activities; lower levels of stress/pressure (except for social climber); low/medium achievement pressure; weak self-perception; low sense of competence; collective style/taste; insecurity of future perspective; no/low status consciousness; immediate gratification pattern. Traditional child cultures can be found both in rural and urban surroundings and are often related to bad housing conditions, a comparatively low social status of the families in question and a great number of siblings. The traditional way of becoming independent is characterised by children who show little competence for biographical reflection. They have little autonomy in everyday practical life and strong ties to family duties and the rhythm of family life. Conflicts in the process of detachment from the family are not yet detectable. Parents take charge in matters such as clothing and pocket money, schooling trajectories and daily time scheduling. The peer group is small and fairly homogeneous, leisure activities take often place at home. These children's ideas about their iiiture coincide with those of their parents: a good job and sufficient money to spend are important elements here, a genderbound standard biography is envisaged (if at all with regard to bad labour market conditions). The traditional childhood described here is not traditional in the sense of childhood, as lived in the 1950s and early 1960s. Rather it comprises a modernised traditional childhood in which mass culture and mass media are no less influential than have been social changes in housing standards and consumption levels. Between these two poles of modernity (highly modernised vs. traditional), we find a number ofpartially modernised children's lives. We found this pattern frequently (but not exclusively) in East Germany and attribute its emergence to the sudden social changes following the fall of the Berlin wall. Such children's lives are characterised by lower levels

56

P. Biichner, M. du Bois-Reymond, H.-H. Kriiger

of modernity, either in general along the majority of profiles and indicators or along the key dimensions. We regard these cases as particularly significant for the later phases of the research in which the respondents' trajectories towards adolescence will be charted. If modern life styles and modern social behaviour patterns signify, inter alia, the expansion of opportunities in an individualised meritocratic society, it will be interesting to examine the biographical 'success' or 'failure' of those children whose lives are marked by complex and 'mixed' patterns of modernity.

The modernisation of childhood in interregional and cross-cultural comparison The modernisation of childhood represents one of the impacts of contemporary social modernisation processes. With respect to changes in family life - here described by changing parent-child relationships, children's cultural practices and the biographisation of childhood - we found similarities across the three regions studied. This permits us to describe tradtional and modernised patterns in ways that hold for the whole sample. Thus, for example, children with a more traditional cultural practice normally live in families in which traditional norms such as far-reaching and matter-of-course parental (especially father's) influence on the organisation of everyday life (time planning, forms of control, choice of activities, etc.) dominate. Parents insist (without opposition) on a mainly familybased leisure programme; individualised forms of leisure arrangements outside the family are less frequently observed. The social network profiles of more traditional children are typically more neighbourhood-bound and of low complexity. In such cases where cultural practices are mainly family-based and influenced, norms that prevail in leisure activity spheres beyond the family have little impact. Traditional children do not have substantial areas of independence from the immediate influence of the family: they only seldom decide themselves about planning and managing space and time, about choosing appropriate modes of communication and social activities far away from home, about the selection and shaping of'leisure careers' (as a field for competition), and about displaying personal tastes. Traditional children recognise and exploit their possibilities for choice to a much lower degree. Achieving a form of relative independence - (partially) free from parental control - largely takes place on the leisure market with its market-based opportunity structure. Traditional children often have access to this market only in a very restricted way, i.e. under framing conditions which do not necessarily help to develop personal autonomy of action and distinctiveness beyond the familial sphere. An earlier (if partial) release from parental control and access to material and cultural resources can also overburden if, for example, a child has insufficient opportunity to exercise preferences, choices and decision-making options in low risk contexts which - in an indirect way - are typically secured by a supporting home. A kind of helplessness-inindependence might ensue, making the child, without such support, unable to deal with the uncontrollable tides of everyday life. Children even need the help of professional therapists in order to develop appropriately individualised standards of behaviour.

Growing Up in Three European Regions

57

Children need adequate framing conditions to support 'modern' cultural practices. In order to be successful and to keep pace with the demands of social and cultural modernisation, such framing conditions (infrastructure, social/family background, etc.) are of central importance. If a certain standard of 'modernity' is or cannot be guaranteed (i.e in the form of an adequate supply of leisure arrangements and educational institutions within easy reach) the child may be at risk of marginalisation (cumulative effects of unequal opportunities). This indicates the importance of developing more differentiated understandings of what the modernisation and individualisation of childhood means, both with regard to stress, risks and support networks and to the reproduction of social inequality. We have, then, found initial and presently provisional evidence of highly modernised and individualised child cultures in each of the three regions. This does not mean that we have found high degrees of modernity in the majority of the cases. We discovered a high degree of modernity only in a very small number of cases. Nevertheless, we take the view that the material indicates a prevailing trend towards modernised and individualised cultural practices amongst children living in affluent western industrialised societies. And even if this trend does not characterise the everyday lives of a majority of children, it still has a trendsetting function in relation to the generational perspective as outlined by Mannheim (1928). Modernised and individualised variants of cultural practice are most common in urban or urbanised centres with a favourable infrastructure and in families with both a social status above average and a norm and value orientation (mentality structure) supporting an 'intelligent' use of (commercial) activity facilities and social networks which helps to gain the required social and cultural capital. Such cultural practices are increasingly subject to imitation and will thus become important for ever wider social groups. Yet, there are countermovements: apart from those 'winners' of modernisation who are able to integrate modern life style features into their everyday lives, there are also quite a number of children who must be regarded as 'losers' of modernisation. Such children do not have the necessary material or personal resources at their disposal nor do they have adequate support networks to live modern individualised lives. Rather they are at risk, both socio-economically (for example, new poverty) and personally (for example, deviant, psychosomatic syndrome, etc.). In particular, this group of children is exposed to the permanent risk of marginalisation in sofar as they cannot keep pace with the speed of modernisation. Especially in East Germany many children are faced with new threats of family poverty, family disintegration, and competition structures (in school, in the leisure sphere). The coexistence of great plurality and variety of different variants and profiles of children's cultural practices in each of the three regions underlines general trends towards individualisation in contemporary children's everyday lives. In some respects this has the effect of masking traditional class distinctions (standards of behaviour, lifestyles etc.). However, the dynamic force of modernisation and civilisation processes is affecting the children's everyday lives unequally and differently, both in general but also between the

P. Buchner, M. du Bois-Reymond, H.-H. Kriiger

58

three regions studied. The trend towards highly modernised and individualised variants of child cultures is most strongly developed in West Germany, in terms of both activities and of social network profiles. In East Germany and The Netherlands w e still find more traditional elements of cultural practices, albeit against very different socio-cultural backgrounds. The fall of the Berlin wall has not meant that infra-structures have improved overnight - quite the reverse - so that the more traditional and often ambivalent patterns of cultural practice in East Germany do not surprise. Children cannot make use of the great number of facilities and programmes which lead to the 'packed' leisure timetables and complex social networks typical of children in West Germany. East German children's social networks are far more neighbourhood-based and are integrated into more traditional forms o f family life than is the case for West Germany. East German girls and boys are more likely to be expected to help their parents with household tasks than those living in the West. Family and kinship relations and activity patterns are clearly more traditional, too. Due to the special function of (private) family life and (private) family relationships in the former G D R where a farreaching public control system reached into the privacy of everyday life, 'new' norms that emphasise individual self-realisation and individualisation contain elements of experienced contradiction and force the East German family to change very rapidly. Family life (with its high degree of parental strain, stress and insecurity) still has a key position with regard to the modernisation of children's everyday lives. Much of the ambivalence found in East German variants o f children's cultural practices can be explained by the effects of the rapidly changing context of family life. W e were initially surprised to find that the cultural modernity profile of Dutch children typically falls somewhere between those of West and East German children (especially with regard to their activities). On closer analysis, the data reveal a very special Dutch family climate in which children are more integrated into adult life, and adults display greater openness to children's wants and needs. One reflection of this 'Dutch national culture' is that most of the mothers whose children w e interviewed are full-time housewives, although some of them with part-time jobs, whereas East German mothers were much more likely to be gainfully employed. At the same time, Dutch parent-child relationships are characterised by a long-established liberality of family cultural practice. The comparative analysis also exposed regionally differentiated filtering functions of schools and school organisation with regard to children's activity and social network profiles. Dutch children spend their first six years in common elementary schools that draw their pupils from the immediate neighbourhood. It is only after having transferred to secondary school that Dutch children develop a higher degree of mobility, including higher degrees of dispersal of activity spheres and the need for more temporal regulation of their leisure activities. B u t even then, they still do not participate as frequently in leisure programmes as West German children do, partly because they return home from school later in the afternoon. Institutionalised leisure activities must then take place even later in the afternoon or during the evening.

Growing Up in Three European Regions

59

The concept of 'selective modernisation' (Gerschenkron 1952; adopted by Zinnecker 1991b) is especially useful in understanding the patterns we found amongst East German children in the study. Radical social change has produced, as ever, 'winners and losers' alongside inevitable contradictions amd ambivalences consequent upon clashes and partial fusions of'pre-modern' and 'post-modern' trends and standards. The West German sample displays the greatest variety of modernised and individualised child cultures; the Dutch sample tends in the same direction, but is, on the whole, less highly modernised, especially with respect to children's activity profiles. We shall be exploring these differences more closely in the coming phases of the research; we hypothesise that the two samples will converge as the children become older. We take the view that both the overall modernisation of family life and the increasing institutionalisation of out-of-school leisure activities for children are everywhere pushing present-day childhood towards modernity. In this context, however, cross-cultural comparison can help to reveal the relationships between school organisation and children's lives out-of-school. Our future research work will concentrate on this important relationship which has been neglected in the past. Even more important seems to be a sociologically grounded childhood research programme which is designed to study children's everyday lives with the mentioned new 'child-focus' and which tries to make micro-macro linkages in order to analyse the impact of modernisation processes on the life world of contemporary children.

Note 1 For more detailed information about the method applying narrative interviews: du Bois-Rcvmond et al. (1995).

Young People and Employment in the European Community: Convergence or Divergence? Jean-Charles

Lagree

European generation - European integration? The dialectic between differences and proximities lies at the heart of European integration processes; appraising degrees of convergence and divergence between Member States of the European Community is one important aspect of analysing this problematic. Such analysis is important for both political and theoretical reasons. Firstly, European Commission policy discourses imply - on the whole - a picture of a future Europe in which existing differences are levelled out, with the underlying assumption that all countries involved are moving along the same walkway, if at different paces and from different starting-points. This picture is redolent of the model of economic and cultural assimilation-homogenisation that dominated the emergence of the USA. But to what extent does this picture reflect economic and social realities in the Community? Whilst it is undoubtedly so that the establishment of the Single Market favours economic homogenisation processes, recent Commission analyses themselves have pointed out that these processes have begun to slow down rather than to speed up (CEC 1991b). The process of European integration is seen to be potentially jeopardised by such developments. At the same time, European integration is not only an economic affair. When we consider the Community from the point of view of a Social or Citizen's Europe, the gaps between the declared aims of convergence of the social policies of the Member States and the their actually highly divergent practices in these respects are very obvious indeed (CEC 1994). In fact, it has been repeatedly demonstrated that there are at least two Europes within the Community: northern Europe (Denmark, the FRG, The Netherlands and the UK) and southern Europe (Greece, Italy, Spain and Portugal), with Belgium and France often swinging midway between the two. Maruani (1994) has described this split for the structures of female labour forces in the the Member States, for example. She is able to show that wide differences persist - but also that over time, these differences appear to be decreasing. Sociologically, it is of interest to investigate to what extent and for what aspects of the social structure this north/south divide is a consistent empirical feature. Youth researchers, for their part, might be particularly interested in finding out how far the situations of young people in their respective labour markets are similar or different,

62

J.-C. Lagrée

and whether convergence or divergence processes appear to be at work here. If it can be further argued that 'generations' as distinct epochal social groups are importantly constructed on the basis of common opportunities and experiences, then we might want to ask whether emerging European integration processes - for example, in labour markets - are providing sufficient conditions for the emergence of a 'European generation' amongst the Community's youth populations. At this point, we are turning more directly to the theoretical reasons for the importance of analysing the dialectic between differences and proximities in European integration processes. The question of the integration of differences in working social systems has long been a core theoretical issue in sociological analysis. On the one hand, differences may be regarded as a threat to social cohesion and social order. On the other hand, differences can be seen as facilitating social and economic change. The social integration of differences has always been a tensioned affair, whether we look back to the French Revolution and its aftermath in the attempt to maintain Republican unity or consider the contemporary pathways to becoming multi-ethnic and multicultural societies across Europe. In other words, European integration processes offer an opportunity to examine an ongoing case study of the social management of tension. The issue of 'generation' might be seen as a critical element of this complex problematic. It is the Community's young people who will confront and experience these tensions and their attempted resolutions most keenly; and it might be argued that European integration could be halted by the non-existence of a generation unprepared or unwilling to sustain its vision - just as it might be promoted by a generation able and willing to do so. That such expectations are placed upon young people is, as always, linked with the tendency for those in leading social positions to transfer that which they themselves have not achieved onto the shoulders of the following generation. Nevertheless, there are at least three interesting questions that present themselves in this context. What do we mean by 'generation'? Under what conditions might a 'European generation' emerge? In what sense is it useful to link the concepts of European generation and European integration together? To summarise arguments made more extensively elsewhere (Lagrée 1991), it is evident that generation is a social construct, not a natural phenomenon. The ways in which generation is specifically constructed at given points in time and in given contexts are closely linked to the social institutional environments that regulate transitions between childhood and youth, youth and adulthood. Amongst the most significant of these environments are schooling and labour market systems. However, if generation is, above all, a social construct, it is not only that. Generations are carved out of exposure to sets of given events, of having shared common situations and socialisation experiences, of developing similar reference sets of the values and norms which inform lifestyle, behaviours, attitudes and aspirations. In short: a certain degree of homogeneity is inherent to the concept of generation. This is not at all the same thing as asserting the homogeneity of age groups as an a priori social category, however. The dialectic of differences and proximities once more lies at the heart of the matter. Those born in the

Young People and Employment in the European Community: Convergence or Divergence?

63

same period and sharing, therefore, some measure of similarity of context and experience are no less quite different from each other in crucial ways: they belong to different genders, ethnic groups, social backgrounds (to mention only those social categories that spring unbidden to the sociological mind). Where are the critical junctures at which generational membership becomes sociologically or personally significant or nonsignificant? For example, does the collapse of state socialist regimes in central and eastern Europe mean the same thing, have a similar momentous quality, for all young people in the countries concerned, to the extent that a distinct generational experience crystallises into a longer-term affair? Does European integration represent similar kinds of visions and issues for all young people in the Community, their manifold differences notwithstanding? More prosaically, if labour market opportunities deteriorate in all the Member States, does this mean that social risks and opportunities in the transition to adult life are shared in similar ways by all their young people, wherever they live? If the concept of generation is to be a useful one in addressing such questions, then it must connect up with the idea of multi-dimensional identity, that is, a concept of identity in which the social differences within given age groups are not erased from view. In this sense, it is diverse identity strategies which structure individual and group relationships and actions in given contexts. As Hall (1991b, 49) argues, "the notion that identity has to do with people that look the same, feel the same, call themselves the same is a nonsense"; identity is built on and through differences. If it is evident that diversity and plurality arise from (for example) class, ethnicity and gender, whence the unity? The concept of 'epoch' is useful in this respect, as a synonym for socialisation contexts shaped by the major historical events of the time span. The contemporary epoch in which we Europeans find ourselves could be described as one of low employment levels, poor prospects of recruitment into employment and an awareness that the days of full employment are gone for good. The collapse of the Soviet bloc is also an epochal landmark, turning former enemies into 'mere' competitors and bringing globalisation processes into the forefront of attention. Nation-states are now compelled to reposition themselves on the economic, political and cultural canvas - but from widely differing starting points and with great uncertainty about the form and balance of the emerging composition. The idea of generation, too, is linked with change and innovation; and it can only be defined through perceived or actual differences between that which came before and that which is now the case. In times of relative stability and continuity, a generation can last a quarter of a century, in that those born and socialised into such an epoch experience relative similarity over a long period. Where social change occurs rapidly, a generation might last only for a very few cohorts, splitting brothers and sisters of different ages into different generations - as, for example, took place in much of western Europe between 1975 and 1980, with the return of economic austerity and the collapse of youth labour markets. During such periods, mismatches between changing social realities and unchanging social institutional and power structures are likely to open up. The theoretical stake here is that of considering the connections between change and continuity, and in this context, the concept of generation can insert a dynamic component: it sets up a direct

64

J.-C. Lagree

link with the historical dimension of sociological analysis in merging individual trajectories with collective futures.

The European Community canvas of youth employment The task addressed in this contribution is a very small and initial step in pursuing the complex issues raised above. It simply uses aggregate statistical data from OECD and Eurostat - in recognition of all the technical imponderables these present for sociological analysis - to attempt a sketch of the differences and proximities on the canvas of the (through to December 1994) twelve Member States with respect to patterns of youth employment, setting these into broader aspects of labour market patterns. What speaks for divergence, what for convergence? How do Member States 'manage' the transition of young people into the labour market, how do they fashion their priorities and preferences in relation to the interests of competing labour force groups? Young people's positioning in the labour market cannot be scrutinised per se, as if young people were detached from the rest of society. They compete with other groups: adults, older workers, women returners, and so on. Class, gender and generation are three sets of social relationships within which the positionings of the various labour force groups are negotiated and influenced. There are no inevitabilities about the ways in which these relationships and positionings are set up, rather there are choices that societies - or rather, those groups and mechanisms that effect priorities and decisions - can make. Such choices regulate the ways in which different labour force groups (women vs. men, younger vs. older, qualified vs. less qualified, occupational sectors) are placed into competition with each other. The precise natures and the likely outcomes of such competition between specific groups will vary across space and time (for example, between regions with different economic structures and between times of recession and recovery). For the purposes of this analysis, six labour market variables have been included, each of which is relevant for one or both of the gender and generation relationships that contribute to the shaping of the canvas of youth employment in the European Community. (International labour statistics do not, unfortunately, provide sufficiently focussed data for including class or occupational relationships into the picture ). These six variables are: education participation rates; net inactivity rates (those neither in education nor in the labour market); youth unemployment rates; adult unemployment rates; long-term unemployment rates; part-time unemployment rates. The patterns revealed by each of these indices can tell us something about the nature of labour force competition between young and old, between women and men, and between the cross groups of these pairs (e.g. young men vs. older women). These patterns are grouped into three broader categories in the following discussion: human capital investment vs. youth labour mobilisation, gender divisions, and convergence/divergence.

Young People and Employment in the European Community: Convergence or Divergence?

65

Youth as human capital or labouring capital? Figure 1 (below) records the activity, employment and unemployment rates for young people ( 1 5 - 2 4 ) together with the total employment rate in the twelve Member States in 1991. Broadly speaking, these patterns indicate that human capital investment in young people, their labour force mobilisation and risks of social exclusion differ markedly between the so-called "Northwest European 1 and 'Mediterranean' countries; they become particularly clear when we focus (further below) upon gender divisions in the youth labour market. The main lines of force that emerged from the multivariate analysis applied to the data led to the conclusion that Community countries can be ordered according to the degree of exclusion risks faced by young people.

Figure 1: Total employment, youth employment and activity rate, 1991

Source: Eurostat 1993 In terms of labour force mobilisation and recruitment, factorial analysis resulted in a clear cluster of four countries: Denmark, the FRG, The Netherlands and the UK. In these Member States, young people are not only mobilised to find a job (net activity rates in Figure 1), but they are also more likely to be recruited (youth unemployment rates in Figure 1). Geographical location, economic development levels, cultures and traditions, and commitment to efficient welfare state policies would seem to suggest a degree of homogeneity amongst this group - with the exception of the UK. In comparison with the other three countries in this group, young Britons find themselves offered fewer incentives to pursue post-compulsory education, but with greater opportunities for labour market entry at an earlier age against the background of employer appetite for cheap labour unprotected by minimum wage legislation. Moving beyond this cluster, Portugal occupies an 'outlier' position in relation to other Member States. If we are prepared to disregard the problem of data reliability in this case, it is possible to consider the high level of youth labour force mobilisation - especially for

66

J.-C. Lagrée

young men - as consequent upon low levels of educational participation. The well-known 'categorisation problem' may equally play a role here: many young Portuguese who are statistically recorded as being in employment may actually be on 'workplace-anchored' training courses. Additionally, young people who find work on the grey economy - which enables them to avoid high taxation on wages - are unlikely to appear on the lists of the registered unemployed. Whatever the case, it would be improbable to place Portugal in close proximity to (for example) The Netherlands in the context of a European youth employment landscape. The 'Mediterranean' group of countries do not make up a homogeneous group either. The factorial analysis shows Ireland, Italy and Spain to have similar sorts of profiles in relation to the variables included in Figure 1 above. Young people's net activity rates are high, which means that educational participation rates are depressed and therefore young people are highly exposed to the labour market. This exposure is more of a risk than an opportunity, in that either the labour markets involved cannot absorb new entrants; or strategic choices are made in favour of the adult labour force; or poorly qualified young people with no prospects of finding paid work nevertheless register as seeking work and so turn up in the unemployment statistics. Overall, however, despite their geographical dispersal, these three countries do share some features in respect of economic development levels, extent of poverty, and strength of cultural traditions. The remaining group of three - Greece, France and Belgium - are equally geographically dispersed, but also share a number of features. These countries have chosen to invest more heavily in human capital, retaining young people in education and training for longer periods in a situation where, were they to be released onto the labour market, they would face a high risk of unemployment. Figure 2: Educational Participation Rates, 20-24 year olds, %, 1989

J

B Gr E F L

' Females NL

• Males

FRG P Irei

DK U.K. 0

10

20

30

Source: O.C.D.E., Employment Outlook, July 1992

40

50

GO

Young People and Employment in the European Community: Convergence or Divergence?

67

In sum, beyond all the arguments about the effects of political games that massage unemployment figures by redefining what young people are officially doing, the differences and proximities in the patterns summarised in Figure 1 point to the importance of political choices in shaping the youth employment landscape. We can underline this point by referring to educational participation rates themselves; Figure 2 (above) presents those for 20-24-year-olds as an example. Economic development levels and the absolute amount of resources available for educational investment certainly differ across the Community. But these differences do not mesh with those shown in Figure 2, which rather reflect strategic choices made by national governments. Some countries - such as the UK - have decided against heavy public expenditure on education and training: higher education is designed for the elite, employers must provide vocational training if they want and need to do so. In other countries - such as Ireland and Portugal - a long tradition of emigration could place questionmarks on public willingness to invest in educating and training people who are likely to take their qualifications and skills abroad in the future. Such considerations are additional to those imposed by constrained resources in the first place. Other countries again have chosen to invest highly in education as a strategy for keeping abreast of economic and technological development, whether in order to make up for lost time (Greece, Italy and Spain) or as a hedging bet for the future (France and Belgium). As a result, the highest educational participation rates are not necessarily to be found amongst the most industrialised or the wealthiest Member States, but are rather to be found in the 'Mediterranean' group. The factorial analysis that informs the discussion thus far was able to account for 70% of the variance between the youth employment landscapes in the Member States with reference to two linked variables: investment in human capital (education and training) and the ability of the labour market to absorb an early-mobilised youth workforce. It would therefore seem relevant to classsify European Community countries according to the political and strategic choices made about the desired extent of educational participation by young people over against the desired extent to which they are exposed to labour market competition. Tradition or modernity? If we now add gender into the picture, does the landscape stabilise or shift? Whilst there are a number of indicators that might be used to assess the extent and nature of gender divisions in the youth labour market, this analysis focuses solely on the net inactivity rate of 20 - 24 year old women, regarding it as a summarising variable that exhibits the balance between social tradition and modernity with respect to gender relations. The net inactivity rate includes those persons in a given age group who are neither in initial education nor in the labour market (whether employed or registered unemployed) (OECD 1992, 54-5). Figure 3 (overleaf) shows these rates for 1989.

68

J.-C. Lagree

Figure 3: Net Inactivity Rates, 20-24 year olds, %, 1989 Gr U.K. E P FRG j I ^ ^ B m • i .

—

Females

i •

F Irel B NL DK

Males

/ 0

5

10

15

20

25

30

Source: O.C.D.E., Employment Outlook, July 1992

On this indicator, the Mediterranean group of countries display a very specific profile, namely, the highest net inactivity rates. One in four Greek women aged 20 - 24 are inactive; inactivity rates for Italy, Spain and Portugal range between approximately 14 18%. It is the UK which is the 'outlier' country from this viewpoint, also with some 18% of women in this age-group inactive. When young adult women are economically inactive, they are generally wholly active in the family, that is, they are full-time wives and - particularly - mothers. Therefore, in interpreting the meaning of differences in age-specific female inactivity rates between the Member States, it is crucial to consider these in conjunction with correspondingly agespecific marriage and fertility rates. In the UK - in comparison with her northwest European neighbours - average ages of both marriage and the birth of a first child are rather lower. This means that the period at which economic inactivity peaks for British women is likely to be earlier than, for example, in the FRG. It is also the case that - with the exception of northern Italy - women in the Mediterranean group of Member States marry and have children on average earlier than in northern Europe. On the other hand, it is worth noting that the European Values Survey (European Values Group 1992, 28) concluded the most family-oriented countries in western Europe are Ireland and the UK, which might well act as a brake on the modernisation of gender relations in the labour market regardless of actual labour force participation rates over women's working lives as a whole. Net inactivity rates in other northwest European Member States are much lower. They range between 10% and 12.5% in Belgium, the FRG, France, Ireland, Luxembourg and

Young People and Employment in the European Community: Convergence or Divergence?

69

The Netherlands; and the rate falls to only 6% in Denmark. The most important influence on these lower rates, however, is young women's educational participation rates. These Member States offer greater opportunities and incentives for young people of both sexes to stay in education and training for longer. Young women have taken up these chances with alacrity in the past two decades, and education has long been judged to be a motor for the modernisation of gender relations. The stabilisation of a north/south split when viewed from the standpoint of gender divisions is reinforced by adding the data shown in Figure 4 (below), which compares the male and female youth employment landscapes for selected Member States. In Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain, the differences are very marked; France occupies its characteristic 'midway' position and in Belgium and The Netherlands differences are much smaller.

Figure 4: Gender divisions in the youth employment landscape, 20-24 year olds, 1989

Z e f f s nd

FH1 Unemployed 1 4 - 2 4 HI

Inactivity 2 0 - 34

n

Netx:tivity 20-24

{jlj

In echication 20 - 24

Source: O.C.D.E., Employment Outlook, July 1992. Eurostat Labour Force Survey, 1991

Convergence or divergence? Thus far, it seems clear that both in terms of human capital investment and gender relations, the youth employment landscape shows the European Community to be markedly divided. The fundamental axis of this division is that between north and south, although the boundaries between the two are not fixed and within this split different subgroups coalesce along different parameters. But to what extent are existing divisions of this kind becoming more or less marked over time? Eurostat data for the 1980s suggests that whilst the gender gap in the youth labour market has narrowed (Maruani, op. cit ), the characteristics of youth labour markets have become more dissimilar along the north/south divide. Figure 5 (overleaf) records changes in youth activity rates between 1983 and 1991. In Denmark, the FRG, The Netherlands and in the UK, these rates have increased for both sexes across the decade. In all other Member States, activity rates have decreased.

70

J.-C. Lagrée

^

Females

D

Males

Source: Eurostat, Labour Force Survey

Figure 6 (below) records changes in longterm youth unemployment rates over the same period. The north/south divide reappears here, too, with the exception of Portugal and Spain; by 1989, 60% of unemployed Greek youth were long-term unemployed persons. Figure 6: Changes in Long term Youth Unemployment 1983-1991,

14-24-year-olds

^

Females ' M ales

Source: Eurostat, Labour Force Sur\>ey

Placing these two features of the youth employment landscape together, we can divide the Member States into three groups. In the most 'northern' group (Denmark, the FRG, The Netherlands and the UK) an increase in youth activity rates has been accompanied by a decline in youth unemployment rates. By whatever means this has been accomplished (and this has varied considerably between the countries involved), these Member States have succeeded in bringing young people back into the labour market. The kinds of jobs and prospects they have is a different matter, but in these countries the problem is now

Young People and Employment in the European Community: Convergence or Divergence?

71

less one of initial labour market insertion and more one of progressing towards stable employment with remuneration levels that enable young adults to consider founding their own household and family. In a 'middle' group that straddles France, Italy, Luxembourg and Portugal, the problem of youth unemployment has been primarily resolved by keeping young people in the education system for longer. This dual strategy both postpones entry onto a pressured labour market and uses this delay to raise young people's qualification levels. The 'trailing' third group, made up of Belgium, Ireland, Greece and Spain, have experienced both a decrease in the youth activity rate and rising youth unemployment. These countries, too, have implemented human capital investment strategies aimed to increase young people's educational participation and qualification levels; but they have also been subject to 'traditional reflexes' that push young women right to the edges of the labour market once more, i.e., sending them back towards the kitchen sink. The dramatically high unemployment rates amongst young women in both Greece and Spain bear witness to such processes of labour market exclusion.

Conclusion The repeated appearance of marked divisions between north/south in the European Community hardly favour the conclusion that the youth employment landscape is converging towards greater homogeneity. The ways in which the Member States are monitoring the labour market positioning, insertion and prospects of their young people contrast strongly. This holds both for gender divisions and for human capital vs. labour mobilisation. These different patterns are very much the consequence of political choices as well as of different levels and rates of economic development within the Community. On this basis, it seems implausible to argue that we are about to witness the emergence of a 'European generation' amongst the young. In the first place, labour force management is evidently still strongly rooted in nation-state-based institutional and cultural frameworks. But in the second place, as Edgar Morin (1987) has argued, Europe is made up of diverse and peculiar unities. This is quite unlike the context in which the USA developed. The USA succeeded in constructing itself into a 'superstate' and a 'supernation' because it was able to impose - or persuade the acceptance of - one language, one set of governing institutions in a federal structure, and ultimately one culture. Its people's detachment from their histories - by the simple fact of having emigrated thousands of miles across the oceans - permitted an emphasis on what they came to share as opposed to what had originally divided them. At least in the historically short term, the institutionalised differences between European nation states cannot be set aside. Even as 'Europe' takes on a higher profile in our daily lives, there is not much evidence to suggest that European integration can be automatically equated with convergence processes. Certainly in the case of the youth employment landscape, the case for convergence remains a weak one. The Member States are keener than ever, it seems, to preserve their traditional prerogatives, especially when these concern the 'vital' issues of socialisation, education,

72

J.-C. Lagree

and intergenerational transmission of identity and opportunity. This is but one example of the dialectic between difference and proximity, change and continuity, at work in contemporary Europe.

Growing Up in Twelve Cities: the Families in which Pupils Live Irmgard Steiner

Comparative studies are of particular significance in youth research, and an increasing number of such studies now include young people from central and eastern Europe into their samples. This contribution presents some initial findings from a study of young people still at school and living in twelve eastern and western European cities. East - west comparative perspectives have often taken a deficit model of central and eastern European societies as their starting-point for investigation (in the case of east west German comparisons for example, see Melzer, Lukowski and Schmidt 1991; Melzer, Heitmeyer, Liegle and Zinnecker 1991). One reason may have been that such studies have used indicators and scales that have been developed in western social research. Differences between east and west thus turn into evaluations of 'better' and 'worse' in that such variables and techniques transport cultural standards based on western traditions, values and ways of life. We have consciously sought to avoid this trap in our research: in studying the differences between - for example - the material and social circumstances of families in eastern and western European cities, we are not concerned to identify and trace 'deficits' in those circumstances (Merkens and Kirchhofer 1993). We have sought to adopt Bronfenbrenner's (1976) socio-ecological approach, which enables the description of young people's environments as a space defined by the holistic totality of social and economic conditions. Young people belong to a number of social systems with which they are both confronted, i.e. which are pre-configured, and to whose constitution they themselves contribute. Some of these systems are relatively stable - the family, school, the territorial environment (of the nation-state). Others are subject to greater change, as in the case of the groups with which one spends one's leisure time. Our study takes in all the life spheres in which young people at school participate as well as their attitudes and values. In this report we shall focus on the family, but this dimension of young people's lives forms only one part of our research concerns, since we are above all interested to link and to integrate material-spatial with the social environments in a holistic manner. The problems associated with comparative studies are many and well-known (see Boehnke and Merkens 1994); we mention but three of the most significant ones for empirical research. Firstly, are the groups under study functionally (and not simply nominally) equivalent with each other in their respective social and cultural contexts?

74

I. Steiner

Young people in full-time schooling in different European countries can be considered so: they all spend a major part of their lives in organised general education environments. School pupils are probably one of the social groups for whom it is most plausible to infer functional equivalence across different modern societies. Secondly, do the research instruments permit conceptual equivalence in their relevance and utility for studying each of the contexts concerned? This refers to the east - west comparison problem noted above; this study has sought to integrate indicators and scales from both social scientific traditions. Thirdly, does data collection proceed on the basis of metric equivalence, i.e., are the respondents being asked the same questions in the same meaning contexts? This presents itself as a problem of translation between languages and is, to begin with, a technical issue of assuring accurate linguistic translations (although much more may be actually involved).

Methodological details The study reported here began in 1991 as a comparative inquiry between East and West Berlin. In 1992, the study was extended to Frankfurt/Oder (FRG), Slubice (Poland), Warsaw, Moscow, Prague and Ioannina (Greece). Budapest, Bratislava, Sofia and Corfu joined in 1993. In each city, approximately 600 pupils aged between 13 and 16 years of age are annually surveyed. Each city provides a clustered sample that balances representation by sex, school type, age cohort, and pupil catchment area. In the first year of study (i.e., between 1991 and 1993, according to the time each city joined the inquiry), roughly similar proportions of pupils are drawn into the sample from the four school years covered (i.e. the classes normally attended by 13-, 14-, 15- and 16year-olds in their respective type of school). In subsequent years, the respondents 'lost' by having moved up into the next class (or having left school) are replaced by a new sample of 13-year-olds. The intermediate age groups are retained as repeat samples; the last round of data collection will take place in 1995, when eight of the twelve participating cities will have followed one group of young people across the period 13 to 16 years of age. This design thus permits cross-sectional, cohort and longitudinal analyses. Whilst the samples are random, they are comprised of socially heterogeneous individuals and groups; we do not assume that the findings can necessarily be regarded as representative for the contexts upon which they are based. The findings discussed below draw solely on the data collected in 1993 - the first year in which all twelve cities took part in the study. The total number of respondents - of all ages - was, by then, 7,453. This sample was balanced by sex, but not by age-group relatively speaking, 13-year-olds were over-represented and 16-year-olds underrepresented. Data were collected from the pupils themselves by administered questionnaires containing, by and large, closed question formats; to this information was

Growing Up in Twelve Cities: the Families in which Pupils Live

75

added secondary analysis of available and relevant official statistics. The questionnaire format was identical in all twelve locations and contained items drawn from previous research as well as indicators developed specifically for this inquiry. The section of the questionnaire pertinent to pupils' family environments was intended to explore the connections between material-spatial, social and familial 'climates'. How do young people of school age live in their families and how do they judge the atmosphere of the family in which they live? The questionnaire included items on the following family-related topics:

Material-spatial environment -

number of rooms in the family household household habitation standard (heating type, sanitation) whether the respondent has her/his own room durable consumer goods owned by the respondent (such as a car, musical instrument, computer, books) - household availability of a telephone - whether a respondent receives pocket money from parents, and how much Social environment - parental employment status - parental educational and occupational social status -family/household composition - number of siblings Family climate -

whether family members receive fair treatment' relationships with father and mother whether the respondent feels good' in the family how parents bring up their children (for example by using statements like 'my father/mother has let me do what I want' or 'my father/mother has never hurt me') - extent to which a respondent may make her/his own decisions (for example by using statements like 7 can meet up with my friends after 8 o'clock' or 'If I wanted I could go camping next summer without adults being there') - extent of respondent's household/family chores and duties Family attitudes - everyday values (for example using statements like 'in everyday life, family harmony is important'; 'ifyou are happy at home, then everything else tends to work out alright') - importance of social relationships with kin andfriends (for example using statements like 7 can count on my relatives when I'm in trouble and need help')

76

I. Steiner

Pupils and their families That young people in the age-band covered by this study have an ambivalent attitude towards their families is not surprising (Engel and Hurrelmann 1989). On the one hand, they are in the process of detaching themselves from their family of origin and peer group influences become stronger. On the other hand, they retain their emotional ties to their families and, above all, remain economically dependent upon their parents. In contemporary Europe, 'family' is no longer a taken-for-granted analytic concept or sociocultural practice: plural family forms have become more common. Divorce and remarriage are everyday phenomena. 'Typical' families are themselves more differentiated: beyond the 'classic' pattern of families composed of a married couple and their biological children born after marriage, there are a variety of possibilities. Young people, on the whole, appear to have adapted to all this (Ferchhoff 1993). Nevertheless, these differentiations are not without consequences for young people's social environments in general. In this study's 1993 sample, 79.8% of the respondents lived with both biological parents. However, there are significant differences between the cities, as shown in Figure 1 (below). In Ioannina and Corfu this was so for over nine tenths of the young people surveyed (94% and 91% respectively), but in Budapest for only just under three quarters, whereas in Berlin itself the difference between east (73%) and west (64%, the lowest proportion of all) is also marked. Figure 1: Family/Household

composition

(%)

Korfti Budapest

^

other

•

m o t h e r and s t e p f a t h e

§Hi m o t h e r only Prague I Moscow W e s t Berlin E a s t Berlin

H I both p a r e n t s

Growing Up in Twelve Cities: the Families in which Pupils Live

77

Those (11.2% overall) not living in such 'classic' family households were most likely to be living in a female-headed single-parent family. As confirmed in other studies (for example, Neubauer 1994), this family situation lasts, on average, for about five or six years as a young person is growing up, by which time their mothers have found a new partner. Once more, wide differences open up between the city samples: in Ioannina and Corfu, very few (3.1% and 3 .7% respectively) of the respondents lived solely with their mothers. In Budapest (15.7%), Moscow (18.6%) and West Berlin (18.7%), proportions were much higher. Similar variations exist amongst those who lived in step-families with their biological mother: 5.9% overall, but 13% in East Berlin, 11.6% in West Berlin and 8% in Prague. It is clear that behind these figures lie very different traditions of family life. Unsurprisingly, very few respondents anywhere lived only with their fathers, in a stepfamily with their biological father, or with other adults altogether (grandparents, children's homes). This would appear to be a relative constant across the twelve cities. But against a background of differently balanced continuity, changes are evidently a part of respondents' family experiences: 5% (N = 175) reported there to have been a change in their family's composition in the past year. We might extrapolate the conclusion - not yet verified, of course - that during the course of childhood and youth some half of all those growing up experience a change in the structuring of their family environment. These developments are accompanied by declining fertility rates and the trend to smaller families visible in all industrialised countries, which inevitably amend socialisation contexts (as in the case, for example, of growing up without siblings; see Engel and Hurrelmann, op. cit ). Average respondent family size lay between one and two children per family (see Table 1 below); two children per family are also modal and median values for all twelve cities. Nevertheless, in Slubice, Ioannina and West Berlin, more than a third of respondent families had three children, whereas in Moscow and Sofia this was the case in only about one tenth of the families. Family planning practices, cultural traditions and material living standards all contribute to these differences. Table 1: Average family size Average N children Sublice

2.54

Ionnanina

2.42

Budapest

2.08 2.07

West Berlin

2.35 2.25

Warsaw

2.01

Sofia Moscow

1.88 1.78

Frankfurt/O East Berlin

2.25

Prague

Young people's social environments are also significantly shaped by parental educational and occupational status levels. Respondent fathers everywhere were, for the most part, in full-time employment, although some were unemployed and differentially at risk of unemployment. The employment status of respondent mothers varied considerably, however, between the twelve locations (see Figure 2 overleaf). In West Berlin and in Ioannina and Corfu, mothers were less likely to be employed than in the nine cities belonging to formerly state socialist countries. A differently constituted sample of cities

78

I. Steiner

would not necessarily produce exactly the same kind of split, but it is of particular interest here that general rates of full-time employment in many of the cities included here have declined between 1992 and 1993. In Moscow, the general full-time employment rate has dropped from 90% to 65%, with rates of part-time employment increasing to 26%. Parallel figures for Frankfurt/Oder are from 81% to 75%, with the sharpest rise in unemployment rates affecting women with children. There is every reason to suppose that maternal employment influences gender-specific socialisation patterns in the family and, more generally, the development of competence for social co-operation amongst young people. In this study, three quarters of young people - girls and boys equally - living in East Berlin reported that they have regular household duties to fulfil; this was the case for only half of the West Berlin respondents, and disproportionately so for girls. Figure 2: Employment rates of respondents' mothers (%) Korfu Budapest Sofia Bratislava Slubice Frankfurt/O Ioannina Warsaw Prague Moscow West Berlin East Berlin

I 0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

% Aspects of material-spatial environment also differ between the cities sampled. The type of house or flat in which a family lives provides a given kind of space for growing up in, one that provides both opportunities and constraints. The extent to which a household can offer young family members particular kinds of space can influence educational achievement and creative and psycho-motoric development; it can also influence the kinds of ways in which parents can bring up their children (Muller 1991; Bertram 1992). In this connection, we describe here differences in house/flat size, having one's own room, and access to a telephone in the family home. As shown in Table 2 (below) the average number of rooms in respondent family homes measured 3 .42 across the whole sample, but ranged from 4.06 in Ioannina and Corfu to 2.5 in Moscow. As a rule, the size of the

79

Growing Up in Twelve Cities: the Families in which Pupils Live

family home increases with the number of children, but this relationship is not uniform across the twelve cities, as indicated by the comparisons between the averages for the largest and smallest families. Table 2: Average number of rooms in home

Iaoninna Korfu West Berlin Frankfurt/0 East Berlin Bratislava Prague Budapest Slubice Warsaw Sofia Moscow

All families

1 child

5 + children

4.06 4.06 3.97 3.86 3.76 3.32 3.31 3.31 3.15 2.99 2.88 2.50

3.72 4.83 3.66 3.18 3.50 2.50 3.13 2.94 2.67 2.60 2.68 2.23

5.20 5.61 3.84 4.69 5.33 2.50 5.00 3.67 3.48 3.86 2.60 2.44

In West Berlin and in Moscow average size of the family home increases little between families with one child and those with five or more children. In Bratislava the average remains the same, whereas in Sofia it even drops marginally. Average size of the family home rises most sharply between the smallest and the largest families in Prague and in East Berlin, and significantly so in Ioannina, Corfu, Frankfurt/Oder and Warsaw. In fact (although the interim mean values are not shown in Table 2), in five of the cities the relationship between number of children and average size of the family home is curvilinear. In West Berlin and Budapest, average size of the family home rises with between one and four children, only to drop again for those families with five or more children. In Bratislava, Sofia and Moscow, average size of the family home reaches its maximum for three child families. Unsurprisingly, there is a close correlation between the size of respondents' homes and whether they have their own room (see Figure 3 overleaf). Overall, about half had their own room whilst one third shared a room with sisters or brothers.

10% of the

respondents did not have a room specifically for their use, whether alone or shared with siblings; but this was especially more likely to be the case in M o s c o w and Sofia, where family homes are the smallest to begin with. Respondents in Berlin - both east and west were most likely to have their own rooms, most of all so in West Berlin. In Ioannina and Corfu, however, the proportions of respondents who shared a room with sisters and brothers are relatively high, although average size of family homes in these locations is the highest of all twelve study areas. This implies, for example, that patterns of use of family space are linked to cultural practice and not simply to space availability as such. The variations uncovered by these very basic comparisons are of particular significance, in that other investigations have shown that of all rooms in a family home, it is children's rooms which have the highest functional density (Muller 1993). This density does not

80

I. Steiner

decrease as children become older, it is simply the uses to which their rooms are put that change. Figure 3: Respondents' space in the family home (%)

« 1 no space of one's own H room shared with siblings E3 own room

100

Virtually all respondent homes in West Berlin, Ioannina and Corfu possessed a telephone and almost nine tenths of those in Moscow, Prague and Sofia. This was the case for only half of those living in Warsaw and, lowest of all, 38% in Slubice. Where young people do not have their own room or access to a telephone, their opportunities to express their autonomy and to communicate with their friends may be constrained. To what extent might these kinds of differences in the material-spatial and social environments of growing up be related to their 'family climate' and attitudes to family as reported by the respondents? We constructed a combined index variable for the judged quality of family climate using responses to three topics: whether family members receive 'fair treatment', relationships with father and mother, and whether the respondent 'feels good' in the family. (With values of .711 for the whole sample and between .657 and .749 for the twelve city sub-samples, the results of applying Cronbach's Alpha to verify the reliability of this index justified its use in this manner.) Figure 4 (overleaf) presents the overall findings for the complete 1993 sample. Young people everywhere judged their family climate to be positive; very few indeed reported a poor (4%) or very poor (1%) family climate in their home. Differences between the twelve sub-samples remain statistically significant (p = .000), if at a somewhat lower level than the differences between materialspatial and social environments.

Growing Up in Twelve Cities: the Families in which Pupils Live

81

Figure 4: Quality of family climate, mean values

Korfu Budapest Sofia Bratislava Shibice Frank fiirt/O. Ioannina Warsaw Prague Moscow West Berlin £ 2 Note: On a five-point response scale, 1= very poor, 5= excellent

A multiple regression analysis with judged family climate as the dependent variable and respondent sex, age, family/household composition and possession of own room as independent variables was then carried out with these findings. For the sample as a whole, sex and having one's own room bore no correlation with the quality of the family climate as assessed by respondents. However, those respondents who live with both biological parents and the younger respondents record more positive evaluations of their family climate. To some extent, these patterns differ between the sub-samples, however. The effect of respondent age upon the judged quality of family climate is strongest of all for those living in Corfu, which may point to more traditional modes of upbringing there. In contradistinction to elsewhere, having one's own room does make a (positive) difference to family climate in Moscow and Sofia (where family homes are typically smallest). Here, presumably, the potential for conflicts between parents and children is greater, since they are less able to distance themselves spatially from each other within the home to pursue their various activities. In all twelve cities parents exercised considerable control over their children's activities, as measured by the respondents' reports on what they were allowed to do and take decisions about on their own account. Only 6% of the 13- to 16-year-olds in this study reported that they are allowed to do what they like; about a quarter are permitted to decide nothing for themselves. Differences between the sub-samples are nevertheless significant (p = .000). In Sofia, 15% could decide, for the most part, what they want to do for themselves, but this was so for only 2% of the Bratislava respondents. Girls

82

I. Steiner

experience greater parental control than do boys, but this does not appear to affect their judgements of the quality of family climate - there is no difference between the sexes here. Overall, positive assessments of family climate were repeated in respondents' family attitudes: all young people are strongly inclined to place the family in high esteem (see Figure 5 below) - a finding that holds across time (r = .513) for that part of the sample for which longitudinal data was available by 1993. Figure 5: Importance offamily for respondents, mean values

On the whole, the data reported here underline not only the similarities but equally the differences in the circumstances under which young people grow up, yet, at the same time, young people everywhere evaluate their quality of family life relatively uniformly highly and place high value on the family as such. The overwhelming majority of these 13- to 16-year-olds clearly see their family as an institution in which negative experiences are the exception to the rule and in which they are treated appropriately. As important as material-spatial differences in family circumstances may be, these do not, of themselves, produce shifts in evaluations of one's own family life and of attitudes to the family generally. It would appear that, despite the significance of ongoing changes in family circumstances occasioned by contemporary social change in eastern and western Europe, family remains a stable feature of young people's lives.

The Cultural Modernisation of Childhood Jürgen Zinnecker

Childhood as a cultural moratorium In this essay, I want to describe and discuss a key element inherent in the modernisation of childhood in developed industrial societies. The account refers specifically to Western European countries, although in principle one would expect to find similar processes at work in North America and in Japan. In broad terms, I want to contend that modernised childhood is increasingly taking on the form of a cultural moratorium. The pattern of middle-class childhood

- a review of a historical epoch

The idea of childhood as a cultural moratorium is not new. The appearance of this idea marks the socio-historical emergence of childhood between the 16th and the 18th century in western Europe, as Aries (1962) and later analysts have described it. This concept became the blueprint for middle-class children's education and lifeworlds from the eighteenth century onwards. The ideology of 'bourgeois childhood' occupied a hegemonic position through to the 1950s, deeply rooted in the heritage and practices of a privileged minority of the upper middle class (Bildungsbiirgertum) (Herrmann 1982, 1991). The influence of this ideology of childhood upon children's lives in other kinds of families and social groups was immense. The warm and welcoming family home, the child's own room, the reading and reflective child, the way of life of the infant school pupil and that of the grammar school student, the polished young lady, garden childhood, the aesthetically aware child, the highly individualised only child or the sibling couple, the ostentatious idleness of children (in the sense of Veblen 1899) - all these innovations were fascinating, strange and completely unattainable for families and children who did not belong to this social and cultural fraction. Childhood as a cultural

moratorium

The thesis of childhood as a cultural moratorium is meant to indicate that - since the middle of the 20th century - 'bourgeois childhood' has become the typical, generalised pattern of childhood, in that it has spread to or been imitated by other family groups. A formerly unattainable ideal has become principally attainable and a standard for

86

J. Zinnecker

everybody. Childhood as a cultural moratorium for everyone has changed the traditional upper middle-class model of childhood. Instead of marking the affiliation to a cultural élite, childhood as a cultural moratorium indicates one's affiliation to a distinguished social majority. It shows that a child is a 'standard' child from a 'standard' social family background. Marginalised groups in the two-thirds-society of children Against this background, competing socio-cultural patterns of childhood lose their dignity and legitimacy. The family-centred child who 'helps' with parents' work, the rural farm child, the unsupervised street kid - they all can now be seen and understood as nothing but deviations from the norm, which is childhood as a cultural moratorium. The generalised dominance of this hegemonic model of childhood brings, as a corollary, social and cultural marginalisation of those children whose life circumstances exclude them from access to it. The socio-political metaphor of the 'two-thirds-society' can be applied equally well to the society of children. Whilst two thirds of today's children experience childhood as a cultural moratorium, the remaining third are subject to marginalising processes. Such marginalisation operates at both socio-structural and ideological-cultural levels. Structurally, they experience a disadvantaged childhood in that they have access to fewer resources for action; ideologically-culturally they experience an outmoded, devalued childhood. Such childhoods are to be found particularly in urban ethnic subcultures, and amongst families living in non-metropolitan regions in which the parents are not well qualified. Cultural modernisation and urbanisation as a social process What kinds of factors account for the generalisation of the childhood moratorium? In the first place, explanations that assume an intended and purposeful transformation behind the change of childhood are not appropriate (Elias 1977). Childhood as a cultural moratorium is not simply the result of educational reform and expansion, for example, as might frequently be deduced. Historically, pedagogising influences have increasingly come to intervene and regulate the process of growing up, but this comprises one aspect of the phenomenon rather than the driving forces that underly it. A necessary, but not sufficient precondition was (and remains) the immense prosperity consequent upon economic growth after World War II in societies without war in Western Europe (Ambrosius and Hubbard 1986). In this respect, the social processes connected with the onset of transition to service economies and the social changes resulting from this have been, it seems, the main forces at play. A concentration and centralisation of markets, trade and traffic and a wide variety of services has taken place in the large conurbations. 'Salary men' and their families increasingly live and work here, too. In this economic, social and cultural 'greenhouse' atmosphere, the model of childhood as a cultural moratorium has flourished. (Sub-)urban ways of life and the expanding groups of well-qualified employees in the public and private sectors whose

The Cultural Modernisation of Childhood

87

lives unfold in these milieux have acted as the transmission belts for this generalising process. Large conurbations offer a differentiated spectrum of cultural and educational activities and opportunities. This has allowed families and children to develop strategies for talcing advantage of such possibilities, which, in their turn, have produced a symbolic segregation of social groups. It is no coincidence then, that theory and research has focussed attention on urban children's environments in attempting to chart and demonstrate modernised childhood as an ideal type (Hengst 1985). It is the children of Berlin, Cologne, Hamburg, and Munich that have been preferentially studied by (western) German childhood researchers. In the process of this discussion about contemporary social change, 'backward' regions - and thus the marginalised one third of the society of children - have largely disappeared from view.

New regulators of childhood It is in the urban centres that, we find the clearest indicators that the institutions and groups that regulate children's lives and the conditions of the cultural moratorium. Historically older forms of childhood were regulated by local milieu, neighbourhood and parish; under modern circumstances, cultural markets and service industries have taken over their roles (Zinnecker 1987, 31 Iff ). Leisure and cultural service industries, which are the new regulating agencies of this stage of life, enable children to adopt independence early. These service industries control childhood (and youth) indirectly and in terms of the market. The market of goods and services is founded on the principle that buyers and sellers interact as equal and free agents, so that those providing these services appear as champions of young people's emancipation. They are the direct counterparts of the traditional social and pedagogical group ties and dependencies. There can be little doubt that they do, indeed, contribute to the 'decline and fall' of childhood as a phase of life that is subject to care, protection and educational 'guidance'. This, of course, is regretted in many quarters, notably perhaps, by those prophets who proclaim the end of educationally supervised childhood (such as Postman 1982; Winn 1981 etc.). As we shall see further below, there is every reason to mistrust such prophecies. But it remains the case that the goods and service markets, together with the media and the cultural industries are implicated in the emergence of long-term trends which enable the young to take part, early in life, in the everyday pleasures and consumption of adult society (such as alcohol, narcotics, cigarettes, psycho-pharmacological drugs etc.);

- delegate to children themselves the management of their own psychic and physical state of health early and independently by the consumption of music, personal bodycare and appearance, deciding what to eat, etc.; - encourage young people to use personal services such as having their own bank accounts, travelling alone etc., at an early stage.

88

J. Zinnecker

Changing strategies of social reproduction In talking about the effects of such anonymous processes like economic growth and structural change, we should not obscure the roles of social actors themselves. Perhaps, without knowing or not wanting to know, parent groups (as socio-cultural fractions) and children themselves materially contribute to the development of childhood as a cultural moratorium. In doing so, they act within the context of and in 'discussion' with educational institutions and cultural industries that enjoy a quasi-monopolistic position. Returning later to children themselves as social actors (a badly neglected research field), I want to point to a powerful parental motivation to engage actively in the social construction and control of childhood. Parents' contribution to the development of childhood as a cultural moratorium is due to a long-term shift in the modalities of the reproduction strategies of family groups (Bourdieu and Passeron 1977). Ever more social groups tend to effect the transmission of social positions by making their children, in competition with other children and adolescents, take part in programmes aiming at the acquisition of cultural or educational resources. On the one hand, this reflects the fact that the reproduction of social and economic positions has been taken out of the immediate and private control of family groups. The urban salary men are no longer able to transmit social positions to their offspring independently and directly - they can autonomously arrange neither professional positions nor marriages. Instead of this, they depend on the activities of their children as individual social actors and on corporate institutions, such as schools, universities and training facilities, but also on specific markets, which - indirectly or 'behind the scenes' - help to effect such processes of social status transmission. This situation results in the fact that individual children, at this stage of life, are induced to acquire as much 'cultural capital' (Bourdieu's term) as possible, the more 'valuable' the better. Childhood under the competitive pressure to acquire cultural careers and titles The acquisition of cultural capital takes place in the form of 'careers' and with the help of privileging credentials. It is the educational system that has the monopoly to grant such privileges. Children and their parents alike set off on a chase for most 'aristocratic' credentials education has to offer, i.e., advanced secondary education diplomas and university degrees. For example, a recent representative survey of German children aged 10-13 (Projekt Bildungsmoratorium 1994) found that 50-60 per cent of all children aim for the Abitur. The children regard 'very good levels of secondary school education' apart from skilful marriage strategies - as the most important pathways towards successful adulthood. In other words, they have firm philosophies of status acquisition at their command. Luck or connections are regarded as factors of minor importance. Many of them say that, in their families, school reports, their annual performance and homework are the subjects of many talks between parents and children and are taken very seriously.

The Cultural Modernisation of Childhood

89

Figure 1: The process of schooling in childhood, adolescence and young adulthood Schools

Families

Extracurricular activities

Clubs

Years in a life course

30

25

Prolongation of schooling

Postadolescene

20

15

School careers

Out of

school

careers

private lessons 10

Intensifying schooling

homework

Hurried childhood Preschooling

Prenatal schooling (mothers)

•

10

15

Hours per day Apart from educational qualifications, credentials and 'careers' related to leisure and consumption activities are gaining in importance. These can be, for example, careers in sports, extra-curricular diplomas concerning specific creative skills, careers in the media system and roles as fashion leaders. These 'leisure-careers' are capable, too, of producing 'leisure-stress'. The results of the above-mentioned survey also indicate that about half the children say that they are active members of clubs and organisations. About 50 per cent of the children practise particular skills, especially in sports and music (playing an instrument). A quarter attend workshops or study groups at schools in the afternoons; t w o thirds have already acquired extra-curricular diplomas and prizes. Leisure-activities and hobbies pursued by parents and children together form part of the weekend programmes of a significant minority of parents. It is worth mentioning that such ways of transmitting and enforcing cultural activities (sports, music, reading) have proved to be highly effective in motivating children to achieve well at school.

90

J. Zinnecker

In a further recent survey (Deutsches Jugendinstitut 1992) 80 per cent of 8-to 12-year old respondents make use of one, two or three opportunities for organised activities. Their 'appointment diaries' especially those of grammar school pupils and of the children of university-educated parents become fuller as they grow older. Ledig (1992, 39) concludes that, when time restrictions force them to set priorities, grammar school pupils prefer to engage in 'organised' activities rather than autonomous and spontaneously emerging leisure-pursuits.

Moratorium-children as a cultural fraction In so far as childhood has become pervaded with cultural careers and credentials this biographical stage is structurally and ideologically increasingly approximating to cultural fractions in social space (Bourdieu 1984). This is the term which Bourdieu has given to the horizontal differentiation of adult society into a cultural fraction and an economictechnical fraction. Children are similar to the 'cultural fraction', where a distinct pre-dominance of cultural resources is connected with a certain economic bottleneck. That is what adult importers and producers of culture and moratorium children have in common. They 'have' lifestyle, they have leisure, and they hold clear ideas about themselves and 'others'. The adult carriers of this cultural ideology 'assist' the children to acquire the appropriate frameworks of meaning. This kind of lifestyle, value system and perspective on the world might be termed 'culturalism'. 'Culturism' in childhood means, for example, that the cultivation of a sense of beauty is increasingly being delegated to this age group. Promoted and accompanied by mothers, the lifephase childhood is taking over the function of a trustee of play, fantasy and aesthetics. Of all age groups, it is children who, by far, spend most of their time painting, making music, dancing, reading literature, playing theatre, practising exclusive sports and other cultural hobbies. The 'original' child with a touch of genius is held in general esteem. Children live a kind of cultivated, 'ostentatious idleness', as Thorsten Veblen once put it. In doing so, they act on behalf of very busy adults and model themselves on the childhood ideal of the cultivated and privileged bourgeoisie.

Female childhood as a paragon of the cultural moratorium Childhood as a cultural moratorium favours girls rather than boys. The domestication and intimisation of childhood connected with the cultural moratorium are tacitly modelled on forms of girls' childhoods (Eicke 1980; Otto 1990). Historical forms of street childhoods were, in contrast, male concepts and favoured boys (Behnken 1990). On average, girls do better at constructing educational careers. The same applies to the cultivation of writing, reading, art and music, in the cultural moratorium. Thus the structure of adult society, in terms of gender, is anticipated during childhood: women are nearer to the cultural pole and men are nearer to the technical-economic pole of the socio-cultural field.

The Cultural Modernisation of Childhood

91

The 'féminisation' of childhood certainly places 'little heroes' in a difficult position (Schnack and Neutzling 1990) who try to make up for by constructing child careers in sports. Boys, all in all, are much more active in sports, whereas girls prefer 'creative' activities (Ledig 1992, 36 f ) . Girls have, in effect, taken over the historically aristocratic arts and cultural activities of former bourgeois childhood, whereas boys pursue modernised culture, the new media and computers. Parents, too, for their part, willingly help boys, to invest in their sons in the first instance, even if they no longer openly admit this to be the case. The latest Shell-Studie (Jugendwerk der Deutschen Shell 1992, Vol.1, 2), for example, shows this quite clearly: boys are granted more time autonomy, educational 'slip ups' (such as repeating a school year) are more readily tolerated, and they receive more money than girls. Institutionally regulated childhood, in and out of school It is by no means novel to state that the childhood moratorium is dominated by schoollike, institutionalised structures, but some aspects of this remain under-exposed. As the educational system becomes omnipresent in children's lives, it takes on - voluntarily or involuntarily - tasks that were formerly dealt with by other agencies and groups. So, for example, children seek compensation at school for their lost 'street childhood', which was a moratorium of its own. They win back parts of the school environment, regarding them as a kind of public street environment (Reinert and Zinnecker 1978). A considerable number of the present-day school and classroom problems are better understood when viewed in connection with this new function, as for example, in the case of violence in school playgrounds. On the other hand, teaching children by no means takes place only in the educational system (as Figure 1 above shows). The trend to pursue courses and 'careers' outside formal schooling has already been mentioned. However, children's lives in their own families are becoming increasingly 'schooled'. The 'schooling' of childhood in the cultural moratorium is a process that is advancing backwards, like a crab, intruding ever earlier into children's lives: from kindergarten into the toddler's nursery, on into the crèche and, ultimately, pre-natal didactics. This scholastic backwash results from the pressure to optimise the acquisition of cultural capital as early as possible, not to lose any time and to fully utilise the relatively limited financial resources of the family (Elkind 1981). The tendency towards a 'schooling' of early childhood within the families began in the 1960s with spectacular appeals to mothers to become 'professional' teachers of babies and toddlers. 'Infant culture', an environment taken for granted by educated middle-class parents, was recommended for imitation to mothers of the lower middle and the working class by offering them organised instruction. Thus a norm originating from the bourgeois understandings, which view it as a process of teaching and acquisition, taking its cue from cultural anthropology studies (Schwartz 1976; Herrmann 1991).

92

J. Zinnecker

Children as social actors or Bourdieu for children If we want to understand what present-day childhood is like, we must take the children's own dynamic force as active persons into consideration. Analytically speaking, it is unwise to think of children as nothing but the objects of adult actions or as the victims of social processes, a perspective which is, in any case, no longer politically justifiable in terms of children's rights (Wacksler 1991). What do we understand by children as independent social actors? In the first instance, this means moving children's specific interests and aims into the 'limelight' of research. We presume that children - like adult actors - endeavour to find a position for themselves in society. In their efforts to do so, they utilise the resources which they personally have at their command in their specific stage of life. Child actors do not have to find out, in each case anew, how to make use of their resources most expediently and effectively. They can go back to cultural traditions providing social role scripts, social characters strategies, and tactics of social acting in childhood. Ways of dealing intelligently with children's life situation, their chances and restrictions are immanent in the traditions. The scripts, tactics, and personality figures have proved to be successful for former childhood generations. In adopting these traditions which lead into the development of an agespecific habitus, they simultaneously adopt significant and promising logics of social action. These traditions and their habitus are not simply passed on between children, i.e., within peer groups. It is probable that adult role models and anonymous cultural mediators, such as the media, pass on the traditions of childhood to children to at least the same degree. However, the question of how traditions and habitus are transmitted is not, on this occasion, my main concern. Rather, I wish to underline the following points. Firstly, cultural traditions can become obsolete when children's ways of life and resources change. The formation of habitus that are related to labouring childhoods or street childhood hardly fit the habitus of a schoolchild. Child actors following such outmoded cultural models well face particular problems as a result. Secondly, childhood is subject to processes of social and cultural differentiation, so that multiple cultural patterns are available for adoption in any one given social space. Likewise, social frameworks of childhood come in different shapes, e.g. stronger or weaker. As traditional socio-moral milieux are fading, as traditional ways of doing things look risky, uncertain and vague, so are the cultural and social frameworks of childhood weakening (Berger and Hradil 1990). Child actors have, in this case, to find out which option within the tradition they want to follow. Such an activation of the individual is, at present, labelled a process of 'individualisation' (Beck 1986), which equally applies to children as well as to adults and young people. If the task to acquire a social position, a social status of one's own, and thereby win social identity, is recognised to be important, subjects must act against the background of existing social configurations. Two modalities of action are relevant here: social association (whose goal is integration) and social distinction (whose goal is delimitation).

The Cultural Modernisation of Childhood

93

In conformity with the perspectives of Bourdieu (1984) and others engaged in the cultural analysis of social inequality, we focus here on the social acts by which children create social distinction. The most important social figurations (groups of reference) from which children want to distinguish themselves in social terms are the following ones:

-

adults (parents etc.); adjoining age groups (infants and adolescents); the opposite sex; competing children of the same age.

Some of the fields of action at children's disposal and in which they can work at producing social distinction are public and private media and cultural industries, educational institutions, and in educational institutions, and in eating, drinking and clothing habits. These fields include organisations and activities that are child-specific, but also those which appeal to and cater for both adults and children. How, then, do children produce social distinction for themselves? Clearly, an analysis of the resources they have at their disposal to do so should throw some light on children's options for action. Such resources may be connected with their personal development and biography, others are linked more closely to their social environment. Without wishing to claim that the following outline is complete or systematic, I would like to offer these points for further consideration.

Resources linked with personal development Children have, in contrast to adults, a specific 'physical capital1: light and small bodies, which are comparatively flexible and swift. Such qualities serve various purposes in very different situations, ranging from hiding in narrow niches to spectacular careers in the field of sports. Another physical quality is 'baby appeal', which touches us and stirs feelings of care, but also erotic desire. This, for example, enables the young actors to keep significant others' anger in check, to find additional protection and to exert social power on others by their erotic fascination. Furthermore, children have specific cognitive resources at their command, e.g. a good memory. Children keep certain new pieces of information well in mind and they have specific visual capacities etc. This is useful in certain games {Memory), for competent use (rapid cuts in TV comics), for 'collecting' information (on cars and clothes) or on historical dates (the history of sportive events, geology) etc.

Resources linked with the life-cycle and age-graded social systems In the age-graded social systems, children are looked at as actors with only limited liability, which not only marks an age norm but also can be taken advantage of. Children

94

J. Zinnecker

must not conform to the same 'civilised' standards of behaviour to the same degree as adults. They may allow themselves certain liberties - not without conflict and limitlessly, but adults are inclined to close their eyes. This, for example, applies to various kinds of everyday delinquency (such as theft of food). Child actors are allowed to express aggression and physical violence in ways which are strictly forbidden to them when they are older. In associating with each other or with adults, children may permit themselves to violate conventions and to commit improprieties, they may show their emotions more freely. Children (have) pass(ed) on a 'culture of tricks'. In case of misbehaviour, children - in contrast to older people - are granted a 'general amnesty'. Since 'social deviations' remain, to a certain extent, without consequences children's scope of action is enlarged. Resources directly linked to the cultural moratorium Within the bounds of the moratorium, which serves the aims of learning and the general acquisition of culture, child actors are, to a considerable degree, relieved of social duties. In a certain sense, children belong to an idle social stratum. They are cared for by significant others and are free for kinds of 'ostentatious consumption' or cultivated idleness. Within the scope of their playful activities, they are allowed to show 'carefreeness'. This implies that their social environment permits them to live very close to the present. Their most important capital is time, which they have, at certain hours and, to a larger extent than an average adult, at their full command. The time they have allows them to indulge in time-intensive and study-intensive hobbies and to commit themselves, with great expenditure of time, to new fashions and topical events. Child actors take part in 'informal' situations to a larger degree than older social actors, which suggests that they can cultivate changing interests, spontaneity, theatricality and expressiveness. On the whole, child actors are in a similar situation to that of 'dominated' cultural groups in adult society. Habitus formation and life-style, correspondingly, become socially distinctive from economic-technical social fractions. Child actors interestingly, develop similar contrasts of habitus and ways of life born for the purposes of social distinction in order to compensate their relatively weak position in society. They cherish a culture of 'alternative' do-it-yourself, they have taste (the new fashions and media, which the ignorant adults with their restricted time do not understand), they actively cultivate the arts, which the adults only adopt, they are distinct and original characters, far from being grown-up 'standard people' and they think of themselves as of having a superior and principled morality. So, for example, we should not be surprised to find that the newest wave of the peace-movement in Germany has been spear-headed by pupils who are concerned about the future of the world as a whole. Adults, on the other hand, appear only to be concerned about their own interests.

Growing Up in Southern Italy: Between Tradition and Modernity Carmen Leccardi

Introduction Living and growing up in southern Italy means facing specific problems unknown to young people in other parts of the country. In short it can be said that young southerners start off at a disadvantage, even though their expectations tend to be homogeneous with those of their counterparts in the Centre-North and their imaginations are fed by the same daily relationship with the media and consumption. The path leading to their future insertion in the adult world appears to be particularly difficult. In the first place, it is heavily conditioned by the relative lack of concrete opportunities to establish a relationship with the working world, such as will ensure access to adult roles in the sphere of employment appropriate to their educational qualifications. These opportunities are clearly inferior in quantity and quality to those available to young people in other parts of Italy. The high rates of unemployment among young southerners, particularly the females 1 , together with the high proportion of precarious and unprotected employment, all too clearly confirm this difference. In the second place, and this is the aspect it seems to be crucial to take into account on this occasion, while young southern Italians have the same educational levels 2 , consumption models and leisure-time activities as the youth elsewhere in Europe, their situation is rendered enormously different by the quality of life of the southern regions (Moscati 1987; Cavalli 1990). Mass education, aspiration for a high-quality use of time, consumption models in accordance with those of the industrialised countries are all dimensions which relate to processes of cultural modernisation. And although not completely realised, and in many ways spurious, as we shall see, these processes are undoubtedly powerful in the South, especially among young people. The quality of life, however, in the sense here intended, depends above all on the results of processes of modernisation of an economic, social and political order. Even though, as is known, cultural and socio-economic dimensions are closely interdependent in their contribution to social-historical change, in today's southern Italy specific contradictions are evident3 In constructing and defining their social identity, young southerners are faced with a problem that is, in its specific form, unknown to their peers living in central and northern Italy. The modern cultural models they have become familiar with through, in the main, their education, are accompanied both by the principles

96

C. Leccardi

of universalism, anonymity and bureaucratisation and by the individualisation of the subject together with the idea of choice. These models must somehow be reconciled with the persistence of socio-economio conditions and of forms of social regulation that may be modem in a formal sense, but which are substantially incapable of moderating change on the basis of public interest criteria (Catanzaro 1989; Fantozzi 1993). In this chapter, I want to look at the particular aspects of this contradiction in Calabria. In more general terms, it is important to emphasise that this problem derives directly from the specificity of modernisation in the South. Although it cannot be denied that southern Italy, as a result above all of State interventions, "has been involved in the great economic development of the industrial countries and inserted, although in an incomplete manner, in the European economy" (Graziani 1987, 202), nevertheless southern society as a whole is clearly suffering. Certainly the material misery that characterised the area until the Second World War is now only a memory. But the serious economic problems deriving from the relative absence of industry, the hypertrophy and inefficiency of the public sector and the dominance of the mechanisms of centralised redistribution of resources remain unsolved. As a result, labour conditions in the private sector are, in more than one respect, palaeocapitalistic, urban degradation is considerable, public services poor and inadequate, and cultural and leisure-time structures are practically inexistent. Above all, these are intertwined with violence and abuse which are, in many areas, central components of social life: the result not only of the high rates of criminality and the consolidated capacity of territorial control of Mafia organisations but also of the general "certainty of the uncertainty of justice" (Signorelli 1988) and its social effects (corruption, illegality, lack of confidence in the institutions). Precisely because increasingly well inserted in the national and international communication circuits, the young southerners of today are well aware of belonging to 'the South'; of living, in other words, in a part of the country in which there exist new resources of knowledge and also new 'moral resources' but where, at the same time, the mechanisms of the market as principles of social regulation are very weak, where civic rights are daily in conflict and confused with the logic of the 'favour', where solidarities of the vertical type tend to prevail over the horizontal 4 ; in other words, in the area, the South, which, in social and economic terms, is the most disadvantageous part of a country connoted by a persistent dualism (Cavalli 1993>5.

Calabria and clientelism What is the situation of the young people of Calabria, one of the most handicapped of the southern regions, emblem of the contradictions and delays but also of the wealth of innovative potentialities, the fruit of education that the 'new South' of the 1990s possesses? 6 . Growing up in Calabria is particularly difficult. Every relationship between young people and social institutions involves the dimension of clientelism.

Growing Up in Southern Italy: Between Tradition and Modernity

97

CHentelism - originally studied by social anthropologists and only in recent years increasingly investigated by sociologists and political scientists - can be defined as a social relationship in which, in the interior of a patron-client vertical structure, there is a direct, personal exchange of benefits (favours on the one hand, loyalty on the other) between two parties (cf. Davis 1977, chapter 4; Eisenstadt and Lemarchand 1971; Schmidt, Scott, Lande and Guasti 1971; Graziano 1976; Eisenstadt and Roniger 1984). In this way membership and interests come to be closely interwoven (Fantozzi 1993, 79). Clientelism has two specific effects on the social and political structure: 'disorganic integration' and 'exclusivism'. Firstly, "when clientelism integrates people in the social and political systems, it does so in a (dyadic) way which prevents the restructuring of society along associational lines (...). Secondly, clientelism integrates but very selectively, the other side of particularism being exclusivism" (Graziano 1977, 361). 7 In the last thirty years, with the end of the traditional isolation of Calabria as a result of the processes of emigration, of expulsion from agriculture, of urbanisation, and its parallel integration in the national and international economic circuits, traditional clientelism (in which privately-held resources are exchanged) has been replaced by political clientelism (in which public resources are transferred) 8 . In its modern version, 'horizontal1, and generalized, political clientelism has led to the use of public resources for the benefit of entire social categories and groups in return for votes or support of a political nature (Catanzaro 1983, 280). This has led to the social diffusion of a two-fold conviction: that what counts in the solution of individual or group problems is not the collective organization of interests but the fiduciary relationship (even if asymmetrical) of a personal type; and that merit, competence, professional ability are less important than the capacity to activate and manipulate relationships (Jedlowski 1992). In this way particularism has become the architrave of the models of socialisation with which the young Calabrians of the 1990s are confronted. The idea that, thanks to 'good connections', it is possible to pursue personal interests, obtaining favours and benefits connected with public resources by circumventing the rules while formally maintaining the appearance of legality, is now widespread. Until public sector employment became oversaturated, the main favour sought was a job. Now, for young people, favours are centred on securing success in the concorsi pubblici, which are open, examination-based competitions that regulate access to those jobs that do become available. For adults, favours have to do with the granting of licenses, subsidies and pensions. 'Having connections' has in fact become a guiding principle of action. Signorelli (1992, 57), with regard to the diffusion of clientelism in the South, has this to say: "All this has led me to the conclusion that the clientelistic system can undoubtedly be described as a system of mass socialization in the practice of active and passive illegality."9 On the cultural plane the negative consequences of the diffusion and legitimation of these illegal practices are numerous: what is public comes to be seen as susceptible of private appropriation; the concrete possibility of appropriating public resources for personal purposes comes to coincide with the ability to gain access to the universe of

98

C. Leccardi

relationships (and political mediation); the conviction grows that the economic sphere has been subsumed by the political. These elements combine to create a situation which deligitimates the mechanisms of democratic and non-occult social regulation, the forms of impersonal trust proper to modernity and universalistic principles in general. Thus, although public resources by their very nature, linked to the modern welfare state, are of the universalistic type, boys and girls learn that, by means of clientelistic mediation, it is possible to divert them to serve private purposes (Signorelli 1992). The principle of equality of rights and duties before the law is denied. Instead, the practical inconsistency of the idea of cooperation and of horizontal solidarity as an instrument for the solution of problems is affirmed, together with the irrelevance of civic commitment 1 0 and, in general, the dominance of criteria of membership as a vehicle providing access to rights.

Family and kinship in Calabria In Calabria, more than elsewhere, the socialisation of young people in this context of political particularism 11 calls for the direct contribution of the family and kinship group, not only because, as w e know, the family plays a fundamental role in favouring, through the mediation of afFectivity, the internalisation by the young of the broader social orientations. But also, more specifically, because in the context of Calabria (and Southern Italy in general) the family is the central social institution. Even in the present day, in a modernised and increasingly complex regional reality, the family continues to guarantee community order and social integration. T o understand fully the importance of family and kinship in Calabria it is necessary to consider the historical context. In the traditional Calabria, before the great post-war transformation and particularly in the Cosenza area, the peasant family-enterprise was the basis of economic and social life (Arlacchi 1980, 19-79) 1 2 . Apart from the satisfaction of fundamental human needs, it coordinated economic relationships, it guaranteed the roles, values and social functions of its members by integrating the economic and extraeconomic spheres of existence, it assured social order and control. Within the family, productive obligations and personal relationships were indissolubly welded. The principal instrument of this union was 'family solidarity', that relationship which finds its expression in the contemporaneous support and control of each component of the family group by the other components (Thomas and Znaniecki 1958). In the interior of the family, individuals did not exist: they were simply the parts of which the family was composed. The family was a social totality. Anyone outside this totality was unprotected and, in fact, was automatically relegated to the margins of social life. The Calabrian peasant family, it should be emphasized, had also, and above all, a hierarchical structure in which the rigid differentiation of male and female roles, of young people, adults and old people, was reproduced: "Until marriage the children had no economic or personal independence and had in every case to submit to the wishes of the father, whose despotism was even more intransigent and severe with regard to the

Growing Up in Southern Italy: Between Tradition and Modernity

99

daughters" (Piselli 1981, 21). The emphasis lay, firstly on the social inferiority of women and their obligation to bow unconditionally to the authority of the head of the family first the father, later the husband. But secondly, this family structure emphasised "respect of the rules, on the supremacy of authority, the sacredness of ties and pacts, the sense of honour." These axes constituted the framework around which, in traditional Calabria, the sense of family developed (Bevilacqua 1985, 298). The mass emigration of the 1960s, urbanisation processes and the penetration of this subsistence economy by market mechanisms put an end to the coercive dimension of this 'sense of family'. The social strength of the totalising image of the family and the conditions that produced dependence amongst its younger members, however, persisted. The poor economic dynamism of the region in fact makes it difficult for those who do not choose to emigrate to obtain an adequate independent income. Even outside the traditional domestic mode of production, the family remains, and in an evident manner, an economically active community: an important 'compensation chamber' of incomes, still considered as family income, and the subject of economic mediations between internal and external resources. The family and kinship also remain central in another respect: that of mediation between young people and the political sphere. Arrighi and Piselli argue that "kinship is now maintained in existence as a framework of protection, as a last defence against the fluctuations of the market, as an instrument of strength of the individual in this local labour market, as a means of climbing the social ladder to the top; naturally, by means of the exercise or support of political power" (1985, 471) 1 3 . The essential social role of the family and kinship for young people's existence is also reflected in the disinclination of young people to emigrate, the corollary of their rejection of the logic of 'sacrifice' that shaped the material existence and the cultural models of the preceding generation. They now consider that they have an inalienable right to live and work in Calabria. In fact, however, the only alternative to emigration is often to adopt a 'waiting strategy' (Reyneri 1979, 307): "waiting" for a proper job (or, at least, acceptable working opportunities) and, in the meantime, accepting temporary jobs or, more frequently, merely taking part in concorsi pubblici in the hope of securing, after all, a public sector job. After a degree or, more often, a diploma has been obtained, there begins the long "grey period" of the transition from education to employment, a sort of no man's land in which the social status of the son/daughter is reinforced in at least two ways. Firstly, during this period, the family and kinship network will try to activate relationships of a particularistic-clientelistic character serving to provide access to a profession, an economic benefit, a "favour" of the political type. Secondly, young people, take refuge in the symbolic value of educational qualifications, in the social prestige which it provides, especially in smaller centres (not only to themselves but also to the family). This acts as a compensation for the dissatisfaction, perhaps bitterness, that they experience, having made the effort to get qualifications which turn out to be of little value in a labour market, that can offer so few opportunities. But using qualifications in this symbolic way strenghtens family bonds. The qualifications acquired serve as a symbol of social release from the obligation of manual work and from the conditions of

100

C. Leccardi

subordination to which the parents' and grandparents' generations were obliged to submit. Educational qualifications thus both insert their possessors in the flow of historical time and enable them to play the role of protagonists of family time. More broadly, educational qualifications symbolise the climb from agriculture to the service-industry sector which a large number of Calabrian families have accomplished in the course of the last three decades. Grandparents were often unable to read or write 14 ; they worked exclusively to survive, frequently emigrating overseas. Parents, generally barely literate and with a hard working life behind them, had emigrated to the northern Italian 'industrial triangle' or to northern Europe; they managed to improve their economic circumstances. Thanks to educational expansion, their sons and daughters are able, at least in theory, to plan their own futures. However, in these circumstances, the young see their own biographical trajectory as the fruit of the long chain of renunciation of the parents, their personal abnegation, their spirit of sacrifice, rather than as the result of social and cultural evolution. It can be seen as the point of view - ratified by a cultural model with ancient roots - according to which the individual always subsumes the social, never vice-versa. This equally gives rise to the debt of gratitude that ties children to their parents. And it is also due to this deep and timeless bond that, despite the difference of educational levels and styles of life, there is no conflict between generations 15 . The young people have the impression that they are proceeding along the same path that their parents opened. In practice, therefore, young Calabrians today see the family as the principal ambit of mediation between tradition and modernity, the social space that guarantees both identity and membership, the vehicle that allows access to a market society (however distorted) under the protection of an adequate shield of relationships. It is a question, clearly, of a relationship which is reached in ambiguity and chiaroscuro. And not only because of the customary mix of affections and conveniences that the family proposes. In the southern Italian context, in fact, the family gives the young the possibility to express the 'modern' identity of consumers, subsidising them during the educational period and during the long wait for a regular job while, at the same time, providing them with the traditional and socially reassuring identity of family members. No longer authoritarian and hierarchical, increasingly egalitarian - at least on the formal plane - flexible, continuously able to negotiate and adapt, the family remains, even today, the arbiter of a large part of the existential decisions of young people. Unweakened by the profound transformations of the last decade, the family and kinship network also bridge the gap between tradition and modernity in a more specific sense, in which the form is dissociated from the substance. Within the family and the kinship the principle of reciprocity, which governed the traditional relationships, apparently remains valid. Substantially, however, both have been penetrated and pervaded by principles borrowed from the market: pursuit of personal interest, competitivity (Piselli 1981). It is also on the basis of these family and kinship models that the young learn the manipulation of relationships can be profitably employed to obtain personal benefits and that the old ethic of family solidarity can be a useful cover for personal interests.

Growing Up in Southern Italy: Between Tradition and Modernity

101

Young women in Calabria Although young people move daily in worlds of signification and cognitive realities that are different and face up to different sets of values, there exists nevertheless, in the Calabrian social context, one preeminent dimension. This dimension is family membership. The situation is thus not exactly one of that pluralisation of life-worlds typical of the modernity that shifts "the accent of reality (...) from the objective order of institutions to the realm of subjectivity" (Berger and Kellner 1974, 77). The family, despite all its changes and uncertainties, remains the ens realissimum. The individual, in the sense of modern subject, is fading. As Signorelli has pointed out, "the process of cultural modernisation in southern Italy has not been, save in a modest degree, a process of individuation, of enhancement of individuality" (1989, 35). But the paths of individuation, it is now clear, are not the same for the two genders, and in Calabria this difference immediately strikes the social researcher. Growing up in a context marked by the superimposition of the traditional and of the modern is for young women a source of problems and difficulties that young men do not encounter, but equally a source of specific potentialities. It should be borne in mind that in the Calabria of today social roles are in part still marked by rigid differences of sex. Women's labour market participation is lower than in North or in Central Italy, and although identification of women's activities with family work has socially weakened, it still exists. Even if the traditional female role model incarnated by their grandmothers' generation - sovereignty in the private family sphere and absence from the public (Siebert 1991) - is now threatened, the process of individuation of young females continues to be conditioned by aspects of dependence and family supervision closely related to that model. The drop in the birth rate 16 , the new existential horizons opened by education, the greater dynamism of social life, linked above all to urbanisation, are elements which, together, have favoured the emergence of young women from the world of 'destiny' in the direction of the world of 'choice'. And it is this opening to the dimension of choice, in the sense of abandoning the biographical paths traced by tradition and bound up with the family that seems to be the heart of the new female identity, rather than, for example, constructing an effective relationship with the world of paid labour, here particularly difficult (Leccardi 1992). The cultural model that underlies young women's values and plans certainly does not imply renunciation of the biographical centrality of the maternal role (Ginatempo 1993), but rather reveals a will to establish an active dialogue between the private and public spheres of life. As the idea of choice gains ground among young women, including those of lower educational level, a need is felt to plan life's 'timing'. The future is not to be 'awaited' but to be actively constructed. The relationship with the world of employment, a necessary part of their biographical strategies, is destined to be longed for, however, rather than actually experienced. The consciousness of being today, as women, subjects in the full sense - no longer partial subjects solely defined by the family roles of mother, daughter or sister - is confronted by the objective limitations imposed by Calabrian economic-political

102

C. Leccardi

structure. This already difficult situation is complicated by a further element: young women's ambivalence with regard to the universe of paid labour, a world which both attracts and frightens them. Young Calabrian women have to face the problem of'leaving' the family universe - a departure not always unopposed by the family, especially in the small centres - without having a clear idea of what 'entry' to the world of paid labour implies, not knowing its code or having any experience of its rules. Their ambivalence also derives from the sense of threat aroused by this adventure without a safety-net, the experience of which the female genealogy was unable to transmit 1 7 . Working for the market can thus be interpreted as risk, as threat to the 'traditional' identity - but also as an opening of unprecedented planning possibilities, as a vehicle of 'modern' identity. The ambivalence between these t w o extremes derives from the fact, noted some time ago n o w by Piccone Stella (1979), that "the young women of the South lack a model of transition from the old to the new." Young women in Calabria are thus particularly alone on their journey towards full social citizenship, which here more than elsewhere tends to coincide with a stable working relationship with the market. But they do not seem to be discouraged. Although aware of the many obstacles to be overcome, they appear to be, for example, more innovatory on the cultural plane than their male counterparts. Recent studies of the work culture of young Calabrians of both sexes (Leccardi 1990) show, that it is young, educationally qualified women, who are the most recent arrivals on a difficult labour market offering limited employment opportunities who are the most open-minded with regard to the new. Despite all difficulties they encounter in their relationship with employment, these young women seem to be in better syntony with aspects of self-fulfilment than are young men of the same age and position. They are readier to consider independent activities and cooperation in a favourable light and, in general, more sensitive to the social dimension of employment. The traditional female extraneousness to the labour market, seems, in a certain sense, to have preserved them from that prevalence of acquisitive values found in the males. The research also revealed another important cultural dimension involved with gender specificity: young women are in a sense more extraneous to clientelistic culture and its practices, than the males (cf. also Siebert 1989). This does not mean that women are completely extraneous to clientelistic relationships and have never derived benefit from them. Rather, counting for little or nothing in the public sphere, and thus also in the political sphere, they have never played a primary role in this regard. The young women appear, in consequence, to be less impelled toward

clientelism than their

male

counterparts. They have in them a certain margin, an interior space of freedom, which is larger than that of the males. In a virtuous circle, this margin offers innovative cultural orientations, the possibility of filtering and sedimenting. The new attitude of the young women towards work - which is also a new attitude to the world - can be interpreted as an indicator of this process. It also clearly demonstrates the connection between women's rising rates of educational participation 1 8 , a greater inclination towards universalistic values and a willingness to encourage social innovation.

Growing Up in Southern Italy: Between Tradition and Modernity

103

Notes 1

At the beginning of the 1990s the unemployment rate of young women aged 14-24 was 65.75% in the South as against 47.4% for males of the same age group (the rate of young women aged 25-29 years was 45.69% as against 23.7% for males of the same age group). In the same period the overall unemployment rate in the South was 20.67% as against 7.72% in the Centre-North (Mingione 1993, 144-45).

2

According to ISTAT data, in 1991 the educational participation rate of young males aged 14-24 was 47.91% in the South (as against 46.67% in the Centre-North); that of young female southerners was 47.34% (as against 50.02% in the Centre-North). However, high drop-out rates are especially dropping behind in their programmes of study.

3

For a reconstruction of the complex processes of transformation of Southern Italy from the 19th century to the present day, which is particularly attentive to these interdependences, see Bevilacqua (1993).

4 5

With regard to this last aspect see Roniger (1987). "The creation of a national market (of capital, labour force and goods) has favoured an unbalanced development and aggravated the dualism already existing at the time of the union of Italy. In other words, a perverse mechanism was set in motion: as the unbalanced development proceeds, the conditions for a balanced development are weakened" (Cavalli 1993, 1081, reflecting on the Italian reality).

6

Colasanti, Mamone, Romita and Thasei (1990, 9): "By the new South we mean the social result of the great transformation in the 1960s and 1970s brought about by the public intervention, the unification of markets, the mingling of cultures, urbanisation and, obviously, by the reaction of the traditional South to these processes of homogenisation and modernisation."

7

We can understand the basic characteristics of a patron-client relation (the forms of which are extremely various) by considering this example: in a southern Italian region "a student, interested in getting an introduction to a professor from whom he needs a favour, approaches a local small-town politician who owes him a favour. The politician puts him in contact with a cousin at the regional urban centre and the latter contacts an assistant to the professor who then arranges the appointment. The favour sought is granted and in return the student promises to campaign for the politician at election times". (Eisenstadt and Roniger 1984, 43).

8

Traditional or 'notable' clientelism can be defined as the relationship between "a notable patron who controls resources (usually his own) and numbers of individual clients who depend on him for survival" (Walston 1988, 2); political clientelism is "a relationship between large groups and public power" (Graziano 1976, 149). Clientelistic action and Mafia action, although not the same, have aspects in common. Both aim to maximise personal privileges and advantages. The former does this essentially by manipulating the legal procedures, thus maintaining legality on the formal plane while, substancially, resorting to the illicit. The latter does this by direct, unveiled recourse to violence and crime: the unlawfulness in this case concerns both the form and the substance. In both cases the meaning of the action, in Weber's sense, is linked to expectations of personal privileges and, in parallel, violation of the rules is both parameter and purpose of the action. See Fantozzi (1990).

9

10 In his study of the civic tradition of the Italian regions, Putnam (1993) placed Calabria last (Emilia Romagna was first). 11 According to Di Palma (1970, 13), a political system can be said to be particularistic "when it advocates treatment for specific subjects that do not fall within the general rules established for the

104

C. Leccardi

category to which the subjects belong". Political clientelism, as Graziano emphasizes (1977, 360-61), can be considered as the paradigmatic form of particularism. 12 This family can be defined, on the basis of its dimensions, as being of the nuclear or partially extended type. However, in view of the solidarity relationships existing between families of the same kinship groups, it can be considered an extended or associated family. See Piselli (1981, 20). 13 According to La Palombara (1964, 306), in this context kinship (parentela) includes a "relationship between certain associational interest groups and the politically dominant party". 14 At the beginning of the 1970s almost 50% of the resident population aged 65 years and over were either illiterate or literate but without educational qualification (Fantozzi, Giacco and Gaudio 1981, 139). 15 On the concept of gratitude see Simmel (1964). 16 In the last four decades the diminuition of the birth rate has been notable also in Calabria. According to 1ST AT data, the reproduction rate of Calabria at the end of 1980s was 1.6 (only slightly above the national rate). In the 1950s, however, it was 3.4 . 17 If one excludes the upper and lower extremes of the social scale, mothers worked away from home only sporadically, often exclusively in coincidence with family migration experiences. 18 In Calabria the number of female university students has increased notably in the last decade. At the University of Calabria they now outnumber male students of the same age. In the academic year 1992/93 female students accounted for 53.77% of the total university population (as against 39.87% in the academic year 1979/80) and for 59.28% of the total graduates. The data are taken from the graduation thesis of Caterina Vincenzo, L'Università' al Femminile (Women at University), a research on female students, Faculty of Economics, University of Calabria, academic year 1993/94.

Modern Childhood in the Nordic Countries: 'Dual Socialisation' and its Implications Lars Dencik

Introduction: childhood and social modernisation Gertrude Stein's famous line a rose is a rose is a rose may be true for roses, but for understanding social phenomena such as childhood it helps us little. At first glance, 'childhood' may be conceived a certain temporal interval in the development of an individual, i.e. the period from birth to the person's 18th birthday. That is, indeed, how 'childhood' is usually understood in legal and administrative contexts. The disciplines of medicine, psychology and education also make use of a chronological conception of 'childhood', albeit with a much more refined graduation. Taking the biological maturation process as their starting point, childhood is typically subdivided into developmental phases, (e.g. the oral phase, the sensory-motoric stage, infancy, adolescence, etc.). However, in the study to be reported - the BASUN project1 - we do not view childhood primarily as a chronological conception. We rather understand childhood as a social construction, as the materially, socially and culturally defined 'life space' of children. Therefore, it is not so that a childhood is a childhood is a ... Childhoods differ from one another. The concept of'life space' is influenced by Kurt Lewin (1936, 1964), in particular, as his ideas have been elaborated within the transactional perspective in psychology. From the standpoint of this perspective, ... the life space is a momentary confluence of person qualities and properties of the psychological environment. The psychological environment involves those features of situations that are relevant to the present motives, needs, and characteristics of the person, thereby fusing persons and environments. As well as emphasising holistic units of analysis, Lewin describes the life space as a dynamic field made up of continually changing person-environment regions and relationships... life space exhibits continual activity and flow. (Altman and Rogoff, 1987, p. 28)

Childhood is the life space of children. From a historical and a sociological point of view, childhood is socially constructed in multi-dimensional space according to the dynamics of societal forces, and hence is changeable over time. Life space is defined by a material, a social and a cultural dimension. Changes in people's material life-conditions, changes in the social structure and networks which they live in, and changes in dominant ideological and cultural outlooks, they all alter the framing conditions for children's

106

L. Dencik

development. Therefore, childhood and child development can not be studied per se, detached from the societal contexts that children confront as they grow up. And therefore, "research with children of different cultures provides a broader perspective on human development than is available when considering human behaviour in a single cultural group" (Rogoff and Morelli 1989). New societal conditions bring about new socialisation patterns and these in turn imply new challenges for children. The ways in which these challenges are handled by children may produce new psychological qualities in children. This idea, amongst others, lies behind the BASUN study, which assumes that "childhood is not what it used to be". In other words, contemporary social and cultural change is producing new conditions of life and new challenges - for children, too. How do the material, social and cultural changes that make up modernity - or perhaps post-modernity - affect children who are growing up in societies undergoing 'the postmodernisation process' (Crook, Pakulsi and Waters, 1992)? How are these changes detectable in the empirical realities of children's lives? What do they mean to children? How do children cope with these new conditions? What kind of social competencies and socio-emotional dispositions are enhanced in the children as a consequence of their way of handling the predicaments they face in modern welfare states like Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway or Sweden? The material, social and cultural conditions that together shape the 'life space' of today's children have changed in many fundamental respects from those in which their parents grew up. Still, both popular images and what presents itself as scientific knowledge about childhood do not necessarily take social dynamics into account. Such images and theories are often based on experiences drawn on realities that, in many significant aspects, have been overtaken by 'newer' realities. In particular, for example, theories of subjectivity and personality formation have not kept up with the consequences of major technological, social and cultural transformations in western societies: Historical analysis suggests that we are currently undergoing a major historical transformation from the modern into the post-modern world. The only comparable transition with which we are generally familiar is the change from the pre-modern into the modern era ... We have not gone far enough connecting our theories of the person with social change, in particular, with major historic transformations in the social world. ... A new theory of the person is needed, [namely] an alternative, constitutive view in which persons are seen as creatures whose very identities are constituted by their social locations. [For this constitutive view] there is no meaningful way to speak about persons abstracted from the particular community that is an essential ingredient of their identities as persons. (Sampson 1989, 914; 917 f)

Effectively, this argues that subjects cannot be defined in isolation from the worlds in which they live: persons are constituted by and through their attachments, connections and relationships. This certainly poses a challenge to traditional conceptions of 'personality' and 'character'. In an attempt to come to grips with these new conceptualisations of human subjectivity, I have elsewhere tentatively introduced the notion of 'kaleidoscopic' social identity and of 'chameleonic' personal character (Dencik

Modern Childhood in the Nordic Countries

107

1989, 1993a). Elkind (1984), in a similar train of thought, has introduced the notion of the 'patchwork self. This chapter explores some impacts of societal modernisation on child-rearing and on the the child's development (see also Dencik 1993c). Here, the spotlight is turned on one significant aspect of what 'modern childhood' conditions mean, namely, the fact that many young children's daily lives are divided between two fundamentally different social settings: the family and the day-care institution. They are thus subject to dual socialisation conditions and processes. Under such circumstances, the analysis of social dynamics demands taking into account changes over time both in units of social organisation (such as the composition and functions of families) and in the social arenas in which subjects act and between which they 'commute' (such as family and school). These changes are, in turn, to be understood at the more macro-level of framing economic and social conditions. Here, the Nordic welfare state model is of special significance, in that the societies involved have experienced strong tendencies towards institutional Vergesellschaftung (after Toennies; see here Arvidsson, Berntson and Dencik 1994). These states are characterised by a large public sector, a strong state-managed social security system, and a comparatively high degree of equality between social groups. Their economies are based on advanced technology, a high level of education in the population, and on a high degree of labour force participation. Among the features that have significantly changed the developmental conditions of children, particularly in Sweden and Denmark, can be included the following:

1. Not only fathers but also mothers of small children are in paid work. Almost all Swedish and Danish mothers of young children are gainfully employed outside the home; in Sweden approximately half work part-time - in the other Nordic countries, especially in Finland, a relatively larger proportion are fidl-time employees. 2. Children spend part of their everyday life in public day-care institutions as part of a group of children around the same age. In Sweden and Denmark over half of the preschool children spend an average of about 7 hours daily in public day-care institutions. Finnish children usually spend somewhat longer hours in their day-care centres - 65% of them more than 40 hours a week. In the other Nordic countries a relatively larger proportion of the children spend their days in family day-care' with publicly paid childminders. 3. Contemporary childrearing norms emphasise that children are individuals in their own right. Children are legally entitled to certain rights, for example, the right not to be physically disciplined or humiliated by parents or other adults. 4. 'Alternative'family patterns and new models of parenting have become socially acceptable. Couples are older when they become parents: the average age of Swedish mothers when they have their first child today is about 28 years and almost half of first-time parents are over 30 when their child is bom. In addition, half of Swedish children are now born 'out of wedlock'. Even if most of children live with both of

108

L. Dencik

their biological parents who share their parenting, an increasing proportion of preschool children (about 14 %) live with a single mother or with parents who practise separated parenting, i.e. they do not live together but they both maintain their parental responsibility and participate in childcare on a regular basis. These observations, simple as they are, suggest that the social world of children today is put together in ways that in many respects have not been presupposed in established theories of socialisation. The need for fresh empirical information about children's realities is evident (see here Elgaard et al. 1989; Nasman 1993). Equally, new concepts by which to comprehend these new empirical realities are called for. The BASUN study offers a model with which we might begin, as shown in Figure 1.

Figure I: Basun model Changes on the social level gainfully employed mothers children in public daycare centers new models of patenting

c imply

shape

>

New social competence and socioemotional dispositions

Modem childhood conditions

etc. socio-cultural analysis

This model is an attempt to encapsulate the points made thus for. Firstly, changes taking place in the patterns and processes of social and family life shape the conditions of modern childhood. The diagram gives three examples of such changes (maternal employment, widespread public day-care, new parenting models), but of course there are others. The conditions of modern childhood (which can be analysed at a socio-cultural level) imply new social challenges for children - for example, responding to the differing rhythms and demands of the separate social arenas in which they find themselves and between which they have to move. Thus, new challenges demand developing and using appropriate coping strategies in everyday social relations; mastering these challenges functions to enhance social competences and socio-emotional dispositions that, in the past, children did not necessarily or usually need to acquire. These challenges and children's responses to them can be analysed on a social-psychological level, whereby it is the actual social interactions that comprise children's everyday lives and experiences that become the focus for study. Viewed as a totality, the model shown in Figure 1 describes the parameters of childhood socialisation in contemporary societies.

Modem Childhood in the Nordic Countries

109

The BASUN-study, which includes research into five-year-olds' daily lives, offers a wealth of material illustrating the processes described above. For example: Amalia is in the living room in front of the TV. She looks for a video-cassette containing the children's programme that was transmitted the previous Sunday. She finds the cassette and puts it into the video machine. Then she tells her mother that she is hungry. Amalia's mother, who is in the kitchen, pours corn flakes into a bowl that she brings to Amalia, who is now watching the video in the living room. It is unusual, her mother tells us, that Amalia watches a video in the moming. The reason it happened this morning is that Amalia spent last Sunday in her grandmother's home. Therefore she couldn't watch television when the programme was transmitted. When she realised this she went to the phone and called her parents to ask them to record the programme on the video.

This extract illustrates that Amalia, a five-year-old-girl, is able to combine the telephone, the TV-set and the video machine into a coherent communicative system to serve her interest in having an experience she otherwise would have missed. Even if she is not quite able to tell the time, she is able to think in temporal categories, to keep track of distant events of importance to herself, to engage in prospective thinking and to plan over long periods in time. Confronted with the challenges posed by new media, Amalia handles them very adequately. Her case is not at all exceptional in our data.

The Nordic context and its implications for children's lives In the welfare state model characteristic of all Nordic countries (if with variations in content and extent), the significant role played by the public sector in guaranteeing social security and services to the community is constitutive. Public pre-school day-care provision is a core element of these services. This welfare state model exists against a background of longstanding cultural homogeneity. This is reflected in language: with the exception of Finnish, Nordic languages are closely related and their speakers can understand each other without insurmountable difficulty; each country is also monolingual (again, with the exception of Finland which has a small Swedish-speaking minority), and they are the only mother-tongue communities for their languages. The tradition of cultural homogeneity is also reflected in religious affiliation - formally, all Nordic countries have a Lutheran state church, although in practice they are amongst the most secularised societies in the world. It may be that the unusually strong emphasis placed on the value of equality, especially in Sweden, is related to cultural homogeneity as a longstanding tradition 2 . Differences tend to be regarded as injustices or, in terms of social behaviour, as deviance. Family policy under the welfare state model, then, is explicitly aimed at equalising children's life circumstances, which is understood in terms of erasing the impact of social origin on life chances. Policy strategies generally involve determining the best solution to an identified problem, which is then implemented uniformly and universally for the whole population. The child allowance system is a case in point. Child allowances - which are relatively high, non-means-tested and transferred to all families with children under 18 - were introduced as part of family support policies. Whereas Nordic countries generally favour

110

L. Dencik

progressive taxation systems, this particular form of negative taxation (i.e. income redistribution) is a flat-rate transfer, which, in disregarding parental income, functions regressively. The alternative - an income-related transfer - is unacceptable to the majority of citizens in that it is seen to result in stigmatisation of lower-income (i.e. disadvantaged) families. A second example is that of public day-care, the cost of which (for a three-yearold, about 12,500 ECU per child per year) is borne, for the most part, by tax income rather than by parents themselves (through fees). Taxation levels in the Nordic countries are very high by international standards: the state takes charge of a high proportion of the income generated by its citizens and redistributes this on behalf of all, as it were. To introduce child-care fees scaled by parental income would, once more, injure the principle of equality as understood in the Nordic welfare state model. This "Nordic welfare culture' is a rather particular amalgamation of Protestant ethics, secular values and social democratic ideological hegemony, one which manifests itself in an emphasis upon social rationality, effectivity and state regulation as the means by which social welfare principles can be achieved in practice (Arvidsson, Berntson and Dencik, op. cit ). Extensive social engineering, if one will, leaves little room for 'third sector' (i.e. civil society) action - once more, particularly so in Sweden. The whole approach rests on the conviction that 'charity' has no place in the modern, humanitarian state and society, and that labour market participation, as the key to social benefit access, should be equally open to all on just terms. Where illness, pregnancy/childbirth and child-care demands intervene, leaves and allowances are intended to ensure that the individuals concerned do not suffer from reduced income levels or job security and advancement. Kindergarten and day-care systems serve differing mixtures of educational and economic ends in this context. In Norway and Finland, for example, the educational benefits of this provision have relatively greater motivational priority. More generally, however, these systems are primarily both a prerequisite of and a response to labour market demands in economies where both parents not only wish to, but also must, take paid work on a continuous basis. Today's parents (of both sexes) themselves, too, want both to lead a professional life and to experience family life with their children. Recent Danish studies (Christoffersen, Bertelsen and Vestergaard 1987; Bertelsen 1991) have found that only 15% of mothers with young children would prefer (if they could) to be full-time homemakers, but half of all parents would ideally prefer both partners to work part-time when their children are young. Swedish fathers now use two fifths of the paid leave days to which parents are entitled for the care of such children. It is often claimed that welfare state policies which facilitate high levels of maternal employment, public child-care and sexual equality reduce the birth rate. However, the fact is that, since 1983, Sweden's birth rate has risen more than anywhere else in the western world and is now the highest in Europe (except for Ireland's which is currently falling) and it is above the critical level of 2.1 per fertile woman. In countries with classical, conservative Kinder imd Kiiche policies (such as the FRG, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Spain and Italy) birth rates have plunged drastically since the 1970s. Italy's birth rate is currently (at 1.29) even lower than that of Sweden in the 1930s, when prominent social

Modern Childhood in the Nordic Countries

111

scientists, such as the Myrdals - both later Nobel Prize Laureates - warned of the effects of an impending population reproduction crisis. In Denmark, too, which has a child and family policy similar to that of Sweden, birth rates are rising. Those European Union countries that have not developed similar social welfare policies have not been so successful. Can it be that the "Nordic welfare model', with all the elements noted earlier, constitutes a significant contributing factor in keeping birth rates at a level which can reproduce the country's population? The evidence suggests, indeed, that this is so (see Dencik 1993b, for a more extended discussion). The welfare society in the Nordic countries has set up special institutions to care for children and to work educationally with children. These institutions have all their particular educational philosophy notwithstanding 'extra-familial care institutions' (utomfamilara omsorgsinstitutioner, abbreviated as UFOs). Whilst it is true that many, if not most, children attend day-care from an early age, it is - strangely enough - often forgotten that virtually all children still spend most of their time within the frameworks of the family. Public day-care provides a complement to, does not substitute, parents and family life. Swedish statistics for 1991 show that 78% of all children between 0-17 years of age live in nuclear families, that is, together with his/her mother and father; a further 13% live with a single parent. Four-fifths of pre-schoolers live with both biological parents, and three quarters of all children will reach the age of majority without their parents divorcing. 'Silver anniversary divorces', i.e., those that occur after 20 years of marriage, account for a quarter of all dissolutions. The situation in Denmark is almost identical. Every tenth child between 0-17 lives in a 'step-family' - with one biological parent and one substitute parent. Every seventh child lives with a single parent. The remaining four fifths of children live with both biological parents. If we compare conditions in the Nordic welfare state to those at the turn of the century, and keep in mind the maternal mortality rate together with parental deaths from infections and work accidents, then there are probably more children growing up today with both of their parents than at that time. In point of fact marriages at the end of the twentieth century last on the average approximately as long (a 17 years) as they did at the beginning of this century. Formerly, marriages were dissolved by mortality, today by divorce. Rates of separation are higher amongst common law couples than amongst married couples, too. In sum: claims that the family as an institution has fallen apart and that almost all children today are 'divorce children' are myths.

Dual socialisation On the theoretical level one conclusion of the new patterns of socialisation may be to abstain from adopting a priori the classic conceptions of 'primary' vs. 'secondary' socialisation. Another may be to depart from traditional thinking in terms of particular socialisation agents that, by their actions, influence the social formation of the child. Rather, the focus should rest on the activities of children themselves within the multiple

L. Dcncik

112

social settings between which they commute. The notions of confluence rather than influence and of self-socialisation engendered by the development and use of coping strategies in social contexts serve theoretical needs more adequately in understanding the realities of modern childhood. This approach points towards conceptualising the total socialisation configuration of the child. Within such a theoretical context, the notion of dual-socialisation refers to the fact that modern children's everyday life is divided between at least two different contexts or socio-ecological settings ('sociotopes'), the family and the day-care institution, each posing particular sets of expectations and behavioural challenges for the child. These sociotopes might be regarded as different social arenas, each with its own particular scenography. The child has to cope with them individually, by adapting to the given social conditions of each - but at the same time the child must learn how to combine and to separate their respective requirements as the situation demands. Although arenas may constitute very different sociotopes in themselves, the child's reality of living in both must entail an integration between them in order to constitute the individual's coherent lifespace. Figure 2 (below) is a graphical representation of these processes, which are here termed the butterfly model of dual socialisation. This model considers the family and the day-care centre as two different sociotopes between which children daily commute. Figure 2: The butterfly model of dual

socialisation

Legend Hi O

= 'Hero', the child under study = the child's mother

O

= the child's father

H2...n = other children at the day-care centre Si .. . n = staff at the day-care centre Arrows * = the social interaction processes F-wing = the child's family DC-wing = the child's day care centre (or whatever kind of extra-familial environment for the child is involved in the particular case)

113

Modem Childhood in the Nordic Countries

What are the relationships between these two arenas, and how do they reciprocate with each other as socialisation contexts? Firstly, the family is an arena set for private social life, whereas the day-care institution is an arena of public social life. Interaction rules and norms in these arenas differ, despite the fact that their populations (i.e. active subjects) overlap. Each sociotope has its own specific interactional logic that individuals are expected to follow to display appropriate behaviour. Secondly, the two sociotopes operate with differing institutional logics. In the family, each child is unique and irreplaceable, whereas at the day-care centre children are treated as equals in relation to one another and can be replaced or exchanged by other children. Family members relate to their children as subjects with whom they are emotionally involved, whereas for day-care staff the children are primarily objects with whom they work. The most important distinctions between these two can be summarised as follows: Table 1: Family and day-care as different sociotopes

child's position

social relationships

time perspective

child-child relations

Family

Day-care

unique

equal with others

irreplaceble

replaceble

private

public

child as emotional subject

child as work object

long-lasting

temporally restricted

few, stable

many, varying

differing in age

same age

Living in and between these two arenas is a psychological challenge - and from early childhood on - in that children are effectively living in two different social worlds on a regular, daily basis of separations from and integrations in both (Dencik, Backstom and Larsson 1988). The extent and nature of children's participation in each of these worlds differs - for example, contacts with and in day-care are of shorter duration than in family life, but, on the other hand, are more varied and episodic, whereby interaction partners change abruptly and frequently. As a consequence, deep emotional involvement (between staff and children and between the children themselves) does not usually result from the quality of relationships and interaction in day-care. On the contrary, modern children are early confronted with the need to acquire a competence for emotional independence, which may bring both positive and negative consequences for their personal development (Elkind 1979). Children are the only subjects who experience both these settings in precisely this combination. Neither parents nor day-care teachers share their experiences.

114

L. Dencik

Children themselves report that they value the following aspects of day-care, in descending rank order:

-

the other children - the playmates and friends; activities you get involved in - what you can do during the days; toys and equipment - all those things you can play with; the staff members - the adults working there.

This appears to hold everywhere, despite the fact that the public day-care systems in the Nordic countries differ considerably with respect to their organisation and educational practices, and that all such systems are subject to continuous changes in staff and structuring. This does not necessarily imply that the quality of the day-care per se is of little significance for children's well-being and development - indeed, the definition and practice of good quality care is under intense debate at the moment. Day-care standards clearly vary, but it is beyond dispute that, with few exceptions, the quality of public daycare in the Nordic countries satisfy high international standards 3 . The crucial point, however, is that they are all 'extra-familial institutions' or 'public arenas' characterised by instrumental interactional patterns. From the point of view of the child, this implies being placed in a situation where a person's daily life must be shared with peers on a more or less random basis and with adults who are there as professional caretakers. Normally, the child has no primordial emotional ties with any of these other persons. Spending time in such a public arena lends other dimensions to a child's life and represents other developmental challenges than those that arise by staying with a mother within the private home. In particular, children are faced with the daily challenge of moving between two fundamentally different sociotopes - the public arena life in the day-care institution and emotionally loaded life in the family.

Dual socialisation and family life Family relations and interactions respond to the challenges of separation/integration posed by daycare participation in a number of ways (Lahikainen and Strandell 1991). The BASUN study data underline that five-year-olds display firmly established and intensely emotional family relationships. This implies that day-care participation does not result in a decline in the intensity of family integration - quite the contrary is the case. For example, weekday early mornings are a time and place during which family members prepare for separation by signalling togetherness and belongingness, in particular by means of privately shared family rituals and verbal exchanges about the day's tasks and prospects. Physical intimacy is one signal that can be used in a regular ritual, such as spending a short family time in bed together or quietly cuddling a child every morning before all members disperse to their daytime arenas. Parents frequently point out that breakfast is an important event at which the whole family gathers together each day. Fathers working late shift, for example, who do not need to get up so early, may nevertheless do so in

Modem Childhood in the Nordic Countries

115

order to share the occasion. Parents endeavour to make these family events pleasant in atmosphere and with kindly touches. Children reveal the significance of these kinds of rituals by their own behaviour: for example, they may insist on joining in on breakfast even though they know that once they arrive at their day-care centre, they will be given breakfast there, too. Parents may remark on this by saying that their daughter or son "eats just for the company". The separation rituals that follow the togetherness rituals may be placed at any point between home and day-care centre, according to a family's organisational scheduling, but they are sometimes followed with acribic attention to detail. For example, one small girl in our study insists that her mother must signal the separation by flashing the headlights and tooting the horn as she drives away past the window, at which her daughter waits to wave goodbye. Such separation rituals appear to be necessary to facilitate the flow of the coming day for both parents and children. They are preceded by outlining or projecting the coming day, in which parents - especially middle class parents - discuss in quite detailed ways with their children what will happen at the day-care centre today and what is planned for afterwards, when they return home. These discussions signal a sense of symbolic togetherness that bridges physical separation, in which parents prepare their children to cope with the challenges the day will present. If parents stay for a while at the day-care centre after delivering their child in the morning (which is commonest in Sweden, due to guaranteed flexibility of working hours), parent-child interaction ceases quite quickly - and it is the children who actively do so, by mentally shutting off parental presence and turning to their peers. The peer-group serves as the most important integrating force in the day-care arena; few children orient themselves primarily via their interaction with the staff. Accordingly, when children leave day-care in the afternoon, it is their peers from whom they primarily separate, not from the staff. Thus children may wish to postpone departure or to continue peer-group play elsewhere, and may try to persuade parents to facilitate this. In Sweden, this second separation point in children's days is more problematic to resolve happily than in other Nordic countries. This is because, in contrast with elsewhere, Swedish day-care centres have no fixed closing times: they are intended to facilitate parents' schedules, so that a child stays until the first parent able to do so picks their daughter or son up. Flexible working hours and part-time work opportunities mean that parental schedules in Sweden are varied and complex, so that individual parents are coming and going at all sorts of times. In turn, this means that when a child's parent arrives, other children will still be in the middle of their games and activities: it is the individual child who must cope with the separation from the peer group. Since many shops and services remain open until late at night in Sweden, parents are also in no necessary rush to get their family errands done before closing time; and the day-care centres themselves provide children with a late afternoon snack (also to ensure adequate nourishment), so that there is no automatic injunction to prepare a family meal by a certain time. This reinforces the negotiability of the day-care separation at the end of the day, since parents cannot usually argue that other demands require that they leave now rather than later. However, once children

116

L. Dencik

actually leave the day-care centre, they rapidly reorient themselves to the family arena, so that reintegration at the end of their day is generally experienced and reported as unproblematic. Our findings concerning modern family life in the Nordic countries indicate that modern families in general devote a very high amount of their leisure time and interests to their children. Family life is very much child-oriented and directed towards having good experiences together. Parents who register their child in public day-care are generally very concerned about the quality of their relationship with their child, they make efforts to initiate common projects and vigorously attempt to establish a sense of mutual belongingness. One implication of this is that the kinds of requirements families demand of their children have changed. The traditional stress placed on behaving properly is weakening, whereas the emphasis placed on 'time-management' is increasing. From the early 1930s up to the mid-1960s (before public day-care for children had expanded to be a general institution in the Nordic societies), traditional modes of upbringing stressed the virtues of 'discipline'. This is no longer the case; children today are subject to a more abstract 'digital drill', which fosters the ability for self-regulation rather than the propensity to be obedient. 'Authoritarian parenting', where children are forced to obey just because the parents say so, is fading away. So, for example, children are rarely forced to eat food they do not want or to wear the clothes parents prefer for them. Instead, parents today invest a lot of time and energy to explain and make their child 'understand' why this or that has to be one way or the other. In modern Nordic families parenting styles are, to a large extent characterised by continuous parent-child negotiations about all kinds of matters (Dahlberg 1992). So whereas peer-group interaction in day-care or at school fosters negotiation competencies, this is no less the case for the 'hidden curriculum' of modern family interactions. Furthermore, dual socialisation has apparently contributed homogenisation between mothers and fathers in their ways of the traditional family fathers were little more than distant whereas nowadays many children meet their fathers in a everyday basis.

to the trend towards rolerelating to their children. In breadwinners to the child, caring relationship on an

It is, to a great extent, this 'silent revolution' in fathers' roles that has contributed to a real revolution in the everyday life of small children. Today's Nordic fathers cook, change nappies and fetch children from their day-care centres. From the child's viewpoint, the opportunities offered by the Nordic welfare model with respect to childhood and family policy has meant that, rather than losing their mother (to paid employment), children have gained their fathers (in family life). In other words: modern family life is as 'new' with respect to childrearing roles and practices as is public day-care as a social institution and arena in children's lives.

117

Modem Childhood in the Nordic Countries

Conclusions As societies change, so do the framing conditions for children's growth and development change, which in turn result in differently constituted subjects, since human subjectivity is anchored in the socio-ecological contexts in relation with which it is formed. On an abstract level, children require an upbringing in order that they may acquire the qualities and competences necessary for tackling the demands they will meet in the future. The life conditions o f contemporary and postmodern societies demand specific qualities and competences, whose acquisition should be facilitated by the education and social experiences children are offered and receive. However, given the pace o f contemporary modernisation processes, experiences per se lose value as an educative tool and content. Parents' own childhood experiences are less o f a reliable guide for today's children, parents' values and attitudes are less relevant for their children's lives, parents' lifestyles do not necessarily offer a model to which children may aspire. In sum, parental knowledge, values and practices erode in their significance for childhood socialisation. Concomitantly, children are 'set free' to choose for themselves their personal and cultural orientations and identities (Ziehe 1991). This freedom is paradoxical,

o f course,

in that it entails the injunction

to make choices.

One

consequence o f these developments is that Nordic parents generally display great concern about their children's daily activities, sensitivity to their children's wishes, and awareness o f the quality o f the emotional and psychological relationships they have with their children. But secondly, parenting is perceived to be an increasingly difficult task. Thirdly, peer-group interactions and relations are an increasingly significant source o f socialisation and acquisition o f relevant qualities and competences. The B A S U N study has demonstrated that, from the point o f view o f the child, spending part o f everyday life in public day-care does not constitute a substitute for relating to parents in the family arena. But it has also demonstrated that day-care experiences, and in particular peer-group interactions, may serve as important complements to family experiences. Research shows that children in general and from an early age seem to profit socially and intellectually from spending part o f the day in a public day-care (Field 1991; Andersson

1992). The dual-socialisation model points to the general relevance

of

'interactional challenges' as a model o f socialisation under contemporary modernity. All must learn to commute and shift between several 'public arenas'; and in doing so, to adapt continuously to new situations and to share daily life with people with whom experiences or frames o f reference are not shared. Psychologically, this demands a sharpened ability for self-control, for developing 'a social ear', for making distinctions and for being able to use

elaborated

codes

to

communicate

effectively.

This

corresponds

with

Elias'

(1939/1978) historical analysis o f the psychological effects o f the 'civilisation process'. Early participation in day-care can be regarded as the modern child's first lesson in learning to be 'civilised', i.e. to be able to control affectivity and emotionality when among 'strangers' on the public scene. In essence, switching contexts demands flexible mastery o f different social codes and flexible differential exposure o f aspects o f the self.

118

L. Dencik

Based on our study of the children's everyday social interactions in day-care and in the family the following tentative conclusions emerge with respect to the social competences which these foster and enhance: -

ability to ability to ability to ability to flexibility;

adapt to new situations - social flexibility; take critical stands - to make choices; reflect on oneself in relation to others - social relational thinking; integrate differing experiences into a coherent understanding - mental

- ability to articulate one's own positions and to take the perspective of others - to communicate effectively; - ability to take own initiatives and to be self-assertive - ability to control emotions - self-discipline.

self-reliance;

In sum: social and mental flexibility, sharpened social sensibility, pronounced ability for self-articulation, the use of elaborated language to communicate effectively, capability to reflect on oneself as a sharer in social relationships, and mastery of self-control are among those social competences and dispositions that seem to be enhanced for children growing up under the conditions of dual socialisation as found in the Nordic countries. Nevertheless, this general statement requires some qualification, since it does not apply to the same extent and in the same way to all children: gender and social background differences remain. These are precisely those competences and dispositions that appear to suit so well the life conditions of 'post-modernity'. As described and depicted (in Figure 1 above), the challenges built into the dual socialisation conditions of modern childhood require and tend to foster a psychological constitution characterised by a combination of mental robustness and high psychological sensibility. 'Untraditional' patterns of upbringing may not live up to the ideals of their grandparents' generation. But as these youngsters develop - free, candid, daring, smart and a little cynical - they are probably pretty well equipped to tackle the post-modern existence which will be their reality. Notes 1 'BASUN' is a Scandinavian acronym for Childhood, Society and Development in the Nordic countries. The contributing researchers are Ole Langsted and Dion Sommer, Denmark; Anja Riitta Lahikainen and Harriet Strandell, Finland; Baldur Kristjansson, Iceland; Agnes Andenxs and Hanne Haavind, Norway; Gunilla Dahlberg, Sweden; and myself. 2 However, in recent decades, much higher levels of immigration, especially from southern Europe and the Middle East, have changed this picture dramatically, especially in Sweden, where 15% of schoolchildren are now of minority ethnic origin. In Denmark, the comparable proportion is 5%, in other Nordic countries these figures remain very small indeed. 3 In Denmark children may start their public arena career in a creche (vuggestue) as 6-8 months old babies. There they are in a group with approximately a dozen of other babies, all of whom are younger than 36 months, supervised by 3 professional childminders. In Sweden the children are mostly at least 18 months old when they join a group of approximately 18 children aged up to 6 years old in public day-care (daghem) - again supervised by, on average 3 pre-school teachers. In some cases they join an

Modem Childhood in the Nordic Countries

119

integrated group of children between the ages 1-12. In Sweden and Finland almost all day-care institutions are municipal; Finland and Norway also have day-care institutions run by third sector actors, such as the Church or other religious institutions. In Denmark parents or teachers can organise their own day-care centres and demand support from the state or municipality, a system now being introduced in other Nordic countries. Due to restricted number of places and opening hours in Iceland a considerable number of children commute between two or more different extra-familial day-care arrangements. In Finland a considerable numbers of children spend very long (>10 hours) days in daycare due to the fact that most working mothers work full-time with restricted possibilities for flexible work hours. There is no simple way of describing the educational style of the systems, but very broadly while the Danish system is 'loose', Finnish day-care is much more structured and 'adult-controlled'. Differences such as these confront the children with quite different coping tasks — and hence, developmental challenges.

Childhood, Family and New Ways of Life: the Case of Sweden Elisabet Nasman

Introduction This paper will focus on childhood as a social construction and on children as a social category. This category is a constant social phenomenon though its members come and go, the membership may vary and the conditions of childhood may shift from one generation to another. The focus is thus on children as the subject of social enquiry. This, to a large extent, means a perspective on children as social actors, whose own perspectives on their life circumstances are of crucial interest for an understanding of what childhood is about. The logical conclusion of such a perspective is that children become informants in their own right. This perspective fits well into historical developments towards individualisation which gave women individual citizenship and now increasingly also makes children visible as individuals with interests and rights of their own. The welfare state identifies individual children in order to distribute welfare to them in an equal and stable way, and, furthermore, individualises children legally, making them less dependent on their parents (Nasman 1994). Public institutions enjoin children to develop social networks and patterns of time and motion in everyday life that are separate from those of their parents. Children do not, however, acquire autonomy on the same terms as adults do. Adults and children are constitutive of each other as occupants of social positions, one subordinated to the other. Children's pockets of independent life are circumscribed by the structure of everyday life in which adults take part. The social construction of childhood is still, to a large extent, the result of adult decision-making and adult organising, especially that of their parents. Accordingly this paper is a description of parenthood just as much as of childhood.

Demographic and socio-cuitural shifts In discussing new ways of life, Sweden is a country of interest. Sweden has been to the fore in many of the processes of social change in childhood and family life. What has happened here has followed in other European countries, though at a different pace and with variations. Do, then, contemporary ways of life in Sweden point to future patterns

122

E. N&sman

for other parts of Europe? Is Sweden the crystal ball for other nations or, alternatively, does the current economic recession accompany a reversal of the established patterns in which Sweden loses its pioneering position and becomes a trend-follower rather than a trendsetter? Many crucial and relevant changes are of a demographic nature. Across the last few decades, mothers have entered the labour market in great numbers, now almost equalling the activity rate among fathers. In 1993, 87% of fathers and 80% of mothers who were living with a partner and who had children under 17 years of age were employed. Expressed differently, this means that four-fifths of under 17-year-olds had employed mothers (Statistics Sweden 1994, 33-34). Rising rates of female labour force participation have been accompanied by shifts in childbearing patterns. Whilst most Swedish women do have children, they are increasingly likely to postpone the age at which they bear their first child. The average age at first childbirth in 1989 was 26.7 years; and very few young women under 18 years of age become mothers (3.7/1000 in 1989; Radda Barnen 1991). By 1990, half of all new babies were born out of wedlock, although nine tenths were nevertheless born to a cohabiting couple (whether married or not) (Statistics Sweden 1994, 24). Two children are the norm for both men and women, though quite a large proportion of women have three children. There has been no increase in the proportion of permanently childless women or of only children, but on the other hand fewer children have several siblings, as many of them did at the beginning of this century. The total fertility rate was 2.09 in 1992. Among the 12-year-olds 91% had a sibling under 26 years of age in 1990; 45% had only one sibling and 15% had three or more siblings (including half-siblings and step-siblings) (Statistical Yearbook 1994, 27). The siblings in a family have become closer in age, since closer spacing together with postponement are the two elements of a wide-spread childbearing strategy among working mothers. This development forms a consistent pattern in which the labour market demands, fiscal and family policy measures, contraceptive techniques and women's emancipation are the various contributory factors usually cited (Sundstrom 1987, 1991; Hoem 1990; Hoem et al. 1990). Family and household compositions have also become less stable, although it remains the case that almost all children under 18 years of age live with at least one of their original parents (in 1990, 99%) and most live with both their parents (in 1990, 78%) (Statistics Sweden 1994, 26). Parental divorce and separation are, of course, the main reasons for family dissolution. By 1990, one in three 17-year-olds lived separately from one of their parents following partnership break-up - but only 3% following the death of a parent, compared with 16% of 16-year-olds in 1916-1925 (ibid, 38). Most of those children living with only one (original) parent live with their mothers, either in a single parent household or in a step-family. Together, they account for respectively 15%, and 5% of all Swedish children, those living with their fathers in similar households and families account for only 2% and 1% of the under-18s. 19% of 12-year-olds live with half- or step-siblings (ibid, 26). The risk of family dissolution is three times higher when parents are not legally married (in 1991, 66/1000 for children of cohabiting parents

Childhood, Family and New Ways of Life

123

compared to 22/1000 for children of married parents). The dissolution risk has increased over time and in all age groups of children. Today, Swedish children are more likely to live with a single parent than to live with parents who are cohabiting, but not married (ibid, 37). On a macro-level, contemporary demographic change towards an aging population means that children constitute but a small proportion of the Swedish people: 22% were under 18 years of age in 1992 (Statistical Yearbook 1994). The latest census data show that single person households are increasing in number, forming 39.6% of all households by 1990. Concomitantly, the proportion of households with children has decreased: by 1990 only 24% included a child under the age of 16.

Changes in gender roles after childbirth Parenting remains gendered activity, although there have also been changes in the gender roles involved, especially for mothers. Today women enter the labour market after completing their education - and stay there, including when they have young children. Parental leave, public childcare subsidies, separate taxation, a steep increase in taxes by income and a decrease in the gender wage gap have produced the economic incentives for wage labour among mothers. Mothers' contribution to family income has become, in most cases, essential to the maintenance of household living standards. Parental leave legislation is the basis of parenting strategies. At the birth of a child parents can share 450 leave days between them as they please; 360 of these days are covered by an allowance which replaces 90% of earnings thus lost up to a ceiling of about 22,000 SEK/month, or at least 60 SEK per day. These leave days may be used until the child is four years old. About half of the children born in 1991 had parents who, during the child's first two and a half years of life shared the parental leave after childbirth. On average, the fathers took two months of parental leave (RFV 1994). The proportion of fathers who take this kind of leave has increased steadily since the option was introduced in 1974. For those born in 1991, their fathers took sole advantage of parental leave - on average, for 198 days (RFV 1994). Furthermore, fathers have 10 'daddy days' on full pay, i.e. leave days which they alone can use during the first months of the child's life. Almost all men make use of this option. In 1991, 85% of new fathers took advantage of 9.7 of these days (RFV 1992) Afterwards, however, most fathers go back to work full-time. When a child is sick or the usual carer is sick, parents may use 120 leave days per year and child for temporary care, and for children aged up to 16 when seriously ill. Other leaves are better paid than the sick leave regulation, loss of income is compensated in accordance with sick leave regulations. A further two days per child and year are available as leave for parents in order that they may make visits to their under 12-yearolds in a child-care facility or school. This option is used to a large extent by fathers: in 1991, 41% of those using this provision were fathers who used 34.1% of the total number of these leave days taken that year. The average number of days taken per child

124

E. Nasman

was 7.9, i.e., far fewer than the 120 days available, and the option is furthermore not used for all children (RFV 1992). Parents with children under 8 years old may also reduce their working hours by one quarter of their usual complement, though without compensation for loss of earnings. Combining childbearing and employment is made possible for women by a parenting strategy that foresees taking a period of full-time leave followed by a return to part-time paid work. In 1993 over half of those mothers with children of pre-school or school age were employed part-time; in contrast to part-time employment in other countries, such opportunities in Sweden are not restricted to marginalised dead-end jobs. Those working for more than 20 hours per week enjoy the same social security protection as do full-time workers, and it is rare to work for fewer than 20 hours per week. Full-time employees may revert to part-time hours under the terms of their parental leave, may upgrade to full time hours again at short notice, and legislation forbids all discrimination on the grounds of part-time leave. However, in a recent survey (Nasman 1992), it seems that in practice part-time employment is associated with an increased risk of poorer wage, advancement and worktask allocation conditions. Nevertheless, the majority of the parents surveyed who were on part-time leave at the time saw no negative impacts of the kind mentioned. 1 At the same time, this study (conducted in 1989) found that only 8% of the fathers had changed to part-time employment within the terms of parental leave following the birth of a child three years previous to the study. And mothers' full-time employment is also on the rise, mainly for financial reasons (Sundstrom 1987). Among men the most frequent parenting strategy is different from that of women, but mirrors changes in the male gender role as well. The change from maternity leave to parental leave and the ensuing options of leave for fathers and for parents jointly, aiming at making it possible for fathers to stay at home from work to take care of their children, have been quite successful. This is reflected in statistical data showing that the number of hours actually worked increases among men in accordance with the age of the youngest child, just as it does among women, though of course women work less than men when the children are young.

Further parenting strategies in the dual-earner family Aside from the parental leave system, child-care facilities are important tools for parents to manage. In Sweden most child-care outside home is publicly run and financed. There are several kinds of public child-care:

1. Day-care centres are primarily intendedfor children of pre-school age. 2. Family day-care is organisedfor 0-12-year-olds, with childminders employed by the municipality providing day-care either in their own home, or in a three-family system where children from 3-4 families are caredfor by a childminder in one of the children's homes.

Childhood, Family and New Ways of Life

125

3. Leisure centres are primarily intendedfor 7- to 12-year-olds before and after school hours and during school holidays. This care is increasingly integrated within the remit of schools. 4. Part-time preschool is for 4- to 6-year-olds and is a legal right of all 6-year-olds a year before they start school. 5. Open preschool is intendedfor preschoolers who are not enrolled in other forms of public day-care. Children are accompanied by a parent, childminder or other adult with whom they are familiar. Parental fees vary according to local regulations, in 1990 from 0 to 2.700 SEK per month in a day-care centre, but on average the fee amounts to 10% of the total cost for a place in day-care centres and family day-care (Bjurek 1992). Part-time preschool and open preschool is mostly free of charge. The state and the municipalities subsidise public day-care and some private alternatives, too. In January 1994, 60% of all children between three months and 7 years of age were in receipt of some kind of child-care outside their home: 36% in a day-care centre, 12% in family day-care, 7% in private paid day-care and 1% in unpaid private care (Statistics Sweden 1994, 30). Children with a single parent were more likely to be enrolled in daycare. 21% of all children were not enrolled in day-care, and most of these were at home with a parent who was taking leave to care for them or in families where working/studying parents (5% of all children) were taking turns to child-care (ibid, 30). Parents genuinely share the tasks around child-care provision in terms of dropping and collecting their children. Fathers maintain their involvement in their children's lives and in domestic work in several ways, despite working full-time outside the home. Most parents do not have completely overlapping working hours, which facilitates their mutual childcare arrangements (Pettersson 1988). Having irregular working hours is as frequent among parents as among other employees, so that irregularity and flexibility of working hours is often used to construct a jig-saw puzzle of time where the parents take turns to take care of the children. These scheduling strategies are often aimed at reducing the hours the children must spend in day-care, even though most parents of young children are positive about the quality and desirability of organised day-care. Family shift-work of this kind means that children may spend more time at home with at least one parent at a time. One drawback for those parents who develop this kind of schedule, is that they see little of each other (Jacoby and Nasman 1989) 2 . In families with more rigid work schedules, the mother's part-time employment may be the only way to increase the child's hours at home (ibid.; Pettersson, op. cit ). Increased involvement in domestic work by fathers is part of the new family life pattern outlined here. Since the 1960s the number of hours men spend on all kinds of domestic tasks has slowly risen, though more frequently those tasks that are related to childcare rather than to housework (Sandqvist 1987). Today, fathers' total workloads, paid and unpaid work included, increase when their children are young just as it used to be the

126

E. Násman

case for mothers only (ibid.). A recent time-and-motion study shows men and women in Sweden today to have the same workloads, when paid and unpaid work are taken together (Rydenstam 1992). Apart from formal rights to parental leave, parenting in Sweden is facilitated by the scope for action offered more or less informally at workplaces. Flexibility of working hours can make it possible to arrive late at work, to leave early or to take time off temporarily in order to take care of the child. To switch work periods with co-workers or to take time off as a compensation for overtime are other strategies used to increase flexibility in responding to child-care demands. These kinds of parenting options are used by both men and women. A recent questionnaire survey of fathers and mothers in various occupations (policemen, skilled metal workers, nurses and assistant nurses) reveals that half or more of the fathers in all the occupations included reported that they had made use of the informal option to be late at work or to leave early due to child-care problems (Násman, forthcoming) 3 . One conclusion to be drawn from these new patterns is that children are spending fewer hours with their mothers and more time with their fathers. It is important, however, to separate time and content. Even though working mothers spend more hours away from home than non-working mothers, that does not necessarily mean that they spend fewer hours in active contact with their children. Another recent time-and-motion study shows that non-working mothers do not spend more time in terms of hours and minutes in interaction with their child than working mothers do (Gustafsson and Kjulin 1992). Furthermore, the separation between the workplace and the home may not be as clear-cut as usually believed. Parents may in various ways be available to their children during their working hours (ibid.). Parents frequently phone their children from work, especially among employees with irregular working hours, as in the police force or in hospitals. Some parents regarded it as a self-evident right and a necessity during late shifts and overtime to contact their children. Children could be brought to the workplace to pay a visit, and occasionally even stay there with the parent during working hours. As patrolling police constables, some parents were able to pay the child a visit at home or in the day-care centre from time to time. What about the employers' point of view on all these strategies? A minority of employees seem to be discriminated against on the grounds of their various adaptions to parenthood. For the most part, though, employer and employees negotiate an informal agreement,

a give-and-take,

whereby

the employer,

when

needed,

gets

loyalty,

commitment and extra effort beyond the formal employment contract and the employee gets appreciation, responsibility and options for adaption to private demands beyond that which is contractually stated. Parenting strategies may thus include a 'sensible' usage of the formal legal rights to parental leave, and, in addition, the usage of informal options to leaves and flexibility at work. (Násman 1992, and forthcoming). T o some extent these patterns vary between social groups. White-collar workers more often take paternal leave than blue-collar workers do, and public sector employees more

Childhood, Family and New Ways of Life

127

often than those who work in the private sector. Furthermore, the father more often takes leave when he or his partner is highly educated and when she is privately employed and has a qualified job (Nasman 1992; Rocklinger 1987; Sandqvist 1987). In contrast, single mothers work more hours, have less flexibility at work and are less available to their children during working hours than mothers in couples (Ostberg 1994). A shared problem for most families with children is, however, the experience of shortage of energy and time, a problem that is to some extent solved by scheduling work and family life (Jacoby and Nasman 1989; Nasman forthcoming).

A children's perspective on working parents That Swedish fathers, to an increasing extent, act as sole carers for their infants and sick children is an indicator of a new fathering role. Gendered parental roles are far from equal, but they are converging. Mothering nowadays includes breadwinning, whereas fathering includes care of young children. Children, boys and girls, thus see their parents take on all sorts of tasks, and though mothers still spend more hours on domestic work, the qualitative change when men do traditional women's work is there for the children to experience and learn from. Drawing on the theories of Chodorow and Dinnerstein, current Swedish writing has proposed that children's experience of a caring father may lead to a dramatic change in boys' and girls' development, since the constitution of gender identity may now include a wider range of characteristics and accepted activities for both sexes (Chodorow and Contrato 1982; Dinnerstein 1977; Jalmert 1990). In an interview study (Jacoby and Nasman op. cit.), we found that children's own views on the dual-earner families in which they lived early included an awareness of the scheduling of family life. Some appreciate the time they spend with their parents at home and favour family traditions such as eating their evening meal together and joint activities during weekends. Some children long for the absent parent, especially in families where parents work on shifts. The tight schedule in a family with two full-time working parents was described by an eight-year-old girl as follows: "I do not spend much time together with my parents. They have to work and iron and wash and hang the clothes and wash the dishes and then after they have washed the dishes and put things in order, we go to bed." (ibid.)

Children display different kinds of reactions to family-work patterns they find unappealing. Some protest, some adapt but express resignation, and some develop strategies to secure more contact with their parents. The eight-year-old girl cited above tried to help her mother in the kitchen, but: "She thinks that it is so annoying. I am so much in her way." The children in this study also took note of the various ways in which parents were affected by their workday. Children could, from five years of age upwards, describe their parents returning from work in terms of mood, energy, activity-level and awareness. Some parents were described in negative terms as tired, angry, irritated, sad, withdrawn, unresponsive or restless. Other parents were, on the contrary, described as

128

E. Nasman

energetic, happy, relaxed, interested, etc. A negatively-described parent could turn into a positively-described one when the reference context was a work-free day. Children told how negative spillover from the parents' work affected their behaviour towards the child, mostly in terms of avoidance, but they also described how some parents tried to hide their feelings in front of the child and pretended to be more energetic and good-spirited than the child believed that they actually were. To what extent can children understand that the behaviour of their parents is influenced by work conditions? For children to be able to draw such conclusions, they must first of all know under what kind of work-conditions their parents work. When asked about this, several factors seemed to be crucial for children's knowledge and understanding. Where parents work in small-scale organisations and locations, situated close to home and enabling children to visit and gain an overview of the production-process, children are well-versed. Under such circumstances a five-year-old child is able to conclude that particular events, such as a mistake forcing the father to start a task all over again, could make him angry when he came home. The children could not usually describe what their parents actually did at work and what kind of impact work had on parents in administrative occupations, where the product is of an abstract kind. The caring professions are, on the other hand, easy to grasp in terms of work tasks, but children did not refer here to the importance of contacts with clients or patients, which, according to parents themselves, is crucial for the family spillover from their work. Production processes involving huge machines or intricate production sequences also made it hard for children to see what role their individual parent played. Similarly, where parents worked in dangerous environments, children's access to the workplace was restricted and their knowledge followed suit. Children's knowledge about their parents' worklife thus varied with these various factors, but knowledge is not enough for children to undertake complicated analyses of their parents' worklives. Psychological research into children's cognitive development, particularly in relation to the ability to attribute causalities to sequences of human action, suggests that younger children may have difficulties in concluding that a parent's behaviour towards the child at home is due to the experiences of the parent at another time, in another place and interacting with other people (Vikan 1987). For the study under discussion here, close reading of the children's descriptions of their parents after work supports these conclusions. Causal reasoning of this kind was only found in exceptional cases among the children of pre-school age. However, children's understanding of what is going on is of importance for their ability to cope successfully with stressors arising at the work-family interface. Negative spillover is one such stressor; another derives from conflict over time-schedules in dual-earner families, especially in those with young children and during periods of parental transition between home and work locations. Parents described young children as provokingly slow when eating and dressing in the morning. Children openly protested by screaming and throwing themselves collected at the day-care centre. The children, too, described conflicts in these switchover periods. This may be interpreted in terms of differences between children and adults in the

Childhood, Family and New Ways of Life

129

conceptualisation of time (Piaget 1969; Tornqvist 1984; Jacoby and Nasman op. cit ). Young children's sense of time is unlike the (modern-day) linear thinking of adults and of working life - or rather, they have not yet learned to think of time as a linear phenomenon. Instead, they seem to conceptualise time as 'punctual' which implies an orientation to the here-and-now, and a perception of time which is closely linked to the activities actually taking place. One might even say that time is these activities. The whole idea of time as separate, i.e. context-independent, and thinking in terms of the distant past and future is, then, meaningless. A punctual time concept thus makes it hard for children to plan and prepare themselves for the break from home or from day-care. Young children find it hard to grasp, for example, that they must hurry up with putting on their shoes and coat because the bus is going to leave in five minutes. Similarly, to argue that play must stop 'now' - although the game is not yet finished - because one is 'short of time', makes little sense to them. Children here face demands to which they cannot respond nor can they understand. Instead, they understand that adults have priority in decision-making and they become aware of their own 'shortcomings', as when (in our data) a four-year-old boy complained about that he was not allowed to play to the end at the day-care centre, and when a sixyear-old boy described how his mother, using a degrading label, used to tell him that he was so slow. This does not mean, however, that Swedish parents are more authoritarian than elsewhere. On the contrary, Swedish family relations accord with a more general trend towards more democratic relationships in families (du Bois-Reymond, Buchner and Kriiger 1993). In my own most recent studies parents have stressed that they want their children to become independent and that children have a right to decide their own future (Jacoby and Nasman 1989). Andersson and Gunnarsson's (1990) study of urban families with young children has shown that parents, to a great extent, choose child-oriented spare-time activities. Dahlberg's (1994) study of families belonging to different social classes, describes how 'new middle-class' parents try to look at things from the child's point of view in order to understand their perspectives and actions better; in doing so, they show the child respect. In those families with well educated parents mainly working with symbols, relations and communication, children were accorded great scope for self-determined action, combined with clear rules about right and wrong. These parents actively arranged their child's activities, but did so in a process of constant negotiation with the child - for instance, about what to eat, which clothes to put on, when to go to sleep, etc. The children, for their part, were used to demanding their negotiating rights and expected their parents to listen to their own good reasons. Although, as my various studies have indicated, the necessarily tight scheduling of family life can mean that parents face conflicts between, on the one hand, democratic ideals and autonomy of action and, on the other hand, organisational practicalities, it remains the case that in general, children express positive attitudes towards their parents and the parent-child relationships (Jacoby and Nasman 1989; Nasman 1993).

130

E. NSsman

Conclusions: fading affluence and Swedish children The early 1990s have seen Sweden's economy move into recession, entailing rising unemployment and public spending cuts; these changes do not leave children's lives untouched, and we do not know what the longer-term consequences may be. The adult male (16-to 64-year-olds) unemployment rate jumped from 6% to 9% between 1992 and 1993, for adult females, from 3% to 6%. Unemployed here refers only to those who actively register as unemployed. Those who are out of work but do not register are counted as not in the labourforce. Mothers of under-sevens are disproportionately to be found amongst the unemployed; the reverse is the case for fathers, but men's representation amongst the adults who are not in the labourforce has disproportionately risen in a period during which increasing numbers of Swedish adults drop out of the labourforce. In 1993, 14% of Swedish under-sixteens had mothers who were not in the labourforce while 5% had unemployed mothers. The corresponding figures for fathers were 5% and 6% respectively. Data on the proportion of children in families where both parents are unemployed are available only for those aged between three months and six years. For this group, 1% of children were in this position in 1993; 7% had unemployed mothers and 8% unemployed fathers. The very young children (1-2 years old) are more likely to have an unemployed mother or father than the older children. Children with single mothers do twice as often have an unemployed mother compared to those living in dual-parent families (Landgren-Moller 1993). We know very little about the impact of unemployment on today's children, and it is unwise to assume that studies conducted in earlier periods or in other countries deliver findings applicable to the contemporary Swedish context. Those few studies that have been carried out recently and in similar societies (The Netherlands and Denmark) report negative impacts on children's school performance, mental and physical well-being, development and interactional behaviour with adults and other children (Grotenhuis 1993; Iversen and Meyrowitsch 1985; Madsen 1991). Even well-developed welfare societies cannot, it seems, protect children from the stressors that result from parents' unemployment; and social services and benefit arrangements are, in any event, being steadily cut back at the present time. In Sweden, most municipalities have reduced public spending in recent years, to a large extent by pruning public school and day-care budgets. Compared with 1992, 1993 budget allocations were reduced by 3.6% for compulsory schooling and 3.7% for day-care. In 1990, a day-care place was costed at 80,000 SEK annually; the 1993 reductions mean, on average, 4,600 SEK less per child for the year (Socialstyrelsen 1993b; SKTF 1993). These cuts are made possible, in the main, by reducing staff numbers and increasing staff-child ratios: numbers of available places fall, enrolment ages rise, opening hours are reduced, parental fees are introduced - and some centres are closed down altogether. At the same time, support programmes for immigrant and refugee children have been scaled down. Between 1992 and 1994, professional, administrative and support staff in the day-care and school sectors were reduced by some 50,000 persons (7% of total staffing); the mean staff - child full-time day-care ratio has

Childhood, Family and New Ways of Life

131

risen from 1 : 7.5 to 1 : 11, and is expected to rise further (Socialstyrelsen 1993a). Yet currently, numbers of pre-school and school age children in Sweden are increasing (Nàsman and von Gerber 1994; Statistics Sweden 1991). What support do the children of the unemployed receive under such circumstances? State agencies (Socialstyrelsen 1993b) expect that these children's situations vis-à-vis day-care will deteriorate. In January 1994, 56% of pre-school children with at least one unemployed parent were enrolled at a day-care centre - but 76% of such children were known to want a day-care place, i.e. demand exceeds supply (Statistics Sweden 1994, 31). One way of reducing municipal day-care budgets has indeed been to reduce day-care access for the children of the unemployed (on the grounds that their parents are available to care for them); and, of course, where day-care fees are introduced, families on lower incomes are disproportionately penalised. The relevance of the classic social research questions about children's living standards, quality of life, social networks and personal well-being would seem, against this kind of background, to continue undiminished. My own current research continues, too, in this tradition, by seeking to look at parental unemployment and its consequences from the child's point of view, not merely as an object of and participant in adults' activities and life-events, but also and especially as active subjects who must make sense of and cope with their own lives. Notes 1 The study included: 1) case studies of a sample of employed parents in five workplaces, 2) a mailed questionnaire to the central unions and employers' associations, 3) analyses of all cases coming to the labour court and to the ombudsman for equality between men and women during three years, 4) a mailed questionnaire to a sample of local unions in the union for white collar workers in private industry, 5) a questionnaire and telephone interviews with a nationwide sample of employers, 6) a mailed questionnaire to a nationwide sample of parents to 1,000 children born in 1986. The data were collected in 1989. 2 This study included case studies of 49 families with children aged 0-17 years old, chosen to illustrate four kinds of workplaces: public administration, a hospital, a process factory and small metal factories. The data were collected in the mid-1980s. 3 The Swedish part of this study included. 1) Five workplace case studies with interviews, observations, analysis of personal files and documents at a textile factory, a hospital, a police-station, a metal factoiy and a daily newspaper, 2) a mailed questionnaire to a nationwide sample of parents within nine of the occupations also represented at the five cases. The data were collected in 1991-92.

Changing Family Transitions: Young People and New Ways of Life in France Olivier

Galland

The French youth studies tradition Through to the 1950s, youth studies in France were almost wholly monopolised by psychological, medical and psychiatric perspectives. This represents a contrast with the situation at that time in other countries - for example, in the United States, where numerous sociological studies about youth had already been conducted. There are probably two main reasons for the absence of sociological perspectives in French youth theory and research during this period. Firstly, whilst Durkheim (1922) - the founding father of French sociology - had introduced the concept of socialisation, he had above all done so in order to discuss its consequences - the 'socially successful' formation of the subject - rather than the modalities of its operation as a process. All that preceded the accomplishment of the 'end-product' held little interest for him and, in his view, had no place in sociological analysis, which is only able to study already 'socialised' subjects. Durkheim therefore delegated to psychology the subsidiary task of understanding the nature of childhood and youth. Durkheim's disciple Paul Fauconnet loyally upheld this tradition, which was, in turn, taken up by Fauconnet's former student Maurice Debesse, the most well-known French youth studies specialist during the immediate postwar years. Given the continuing strength of Durkheimian thought, it is not surprising to find that the study of youth long remained within the province of psychology. Secondly, however, it had been psychology itself that had, at the beginning of the present century, introduced the concept of 'adolescence' into its scientific discourse, to which a number of important psychologists of the day addressed their attention - for example, Mendousse published work in this field right at the turn of the century, well before the works of Freud achieved an impact in France. This was the first time that adolescence had been considered as a phase of transition and in terms of a process which, in the form of a puberty crisis, led the way to adulthood. As a result, the 'youth question' was long reduced to the 'problem of adolescence'. Sociologists only began to reconsider youth studies during the 1960s, as signs of a new 'juvenile culture' began to manifest themselves more insistently. US American sociologists, in particular cultural sociologists, had long since produced analyses of the adolescent social personality in subcultural contexts - itself a research field in which they

134

O. Galland

had long specialised. In France, Edgar Morin (1966) had taken up this tradition, underlining the sudden appearance of adolescence as a social age group with specific cultures and values that transcend national and class lines. This new social group has emerged during the second half of the twentieth century in mass industrialised civilisations, swept along in an all encompassing flood of the cultivation of youthfulness and modernity. Nevertheless, the majority of French sociologists, faithful to a Durkheimian tradition with which they often combined Marxist influences, did not adopt Morin's perspective. For example, Jean-Claude Chamboredon (1967) - disciple of Bourdieu - published a scathing critique of Morin's ideas, in which he attacked two illusions that, in his view, suffuse the youth question and feed "speculations on the rise of youth". The 'illusion of innovation' suggests the accession of a new generation and new behaviours; the 'culturalist illusion' proposes that youth culture possesses a comprehensive and homogenous character. Chamboredon developed, as an alternative, a diffusionist hypothesis in which schooling and the rise of the middle classes are the motors: youth culture is nothing more than the adoption of a redefined and amended 'student model' by middle class youth, who but appear as a new age class as a consequence of the prolongation of educational participation. If the extension of schooling were indeed to possess the power to define a new stage of life, then this power does not lie in supplying the young experimenters with the cultural means by which to live it out. They simply no longer find these means in their culture of origin and "thus seek recipes for an adolescent art de vivre" in youth fashion and media. The difference between this approach and the culturalist thesis is evident. For Chamboredon, adolescent culture is nothing more than a version of conformism that permits people to live in an indeterminate status. For the culturalists, youth culture is an authentic symbolic expression of value systems and status hierarchies quite distinct from those of adult norms and roles. Insofar as Bourdieu himself has addressed the matter of age groups, he has done so solely from the perspective of class struggles between the 'young' and the 'old'. Age categories, in this view, are merely the product of these struggles of designation which relegate the old to their decline and the young to their imperfection. This is the sense in which we are to understand what Bourdieu (1980) meant in coining the phrase "la jeunesse n'est qu'un mot" (youth is nothing but a word): age is first and above all a form of social labelling employed by competing social groups - roughly speaking, the 'young' and the 'old' - undertaken to mark their respective present or future dominance over each other. More generally, on many occasions Bourdieu has risen to oppose the ideological coup de force that consists of amalgamating social groups as different as apprentices and university students into one category called 'young people'.

135

Changing Family Transitions: Young People and New Ways of Life in France

Youth as transition to adult life It has been in this intellectual context that a new generation of researchers sought, at the beginning of the 1980s, to fashion a new theoretical and empirical path that avoids both Monti's culturalism and Boudieu's constraining nominalism. One way forward has been to introduce the notion of transition to adult life as a central analytic element. That is to say, to consider youth essentially as a journey effected between t w o principal axes: education-employment and family-marriage. The idea of entry to adult life as a journey draws on four influences: demographers' concepts of life calendars and life cycles; anthropological work on rites de passage;

historical analyses of childhood and youth; and

sociological perspectives on the functions of and socialisation into life course phases and their respective roles. In this kind of approach, the central question is no longer that of the 'nature' of youth but rather becomes that of the organisation of the journey's thresholds, and in which the idea of social class and gender specific journey patterns and cultural meanings is integrated as a matter of course. In this analytical framework, it is the crossing of thresholds that define the pattern and progress of transition to adulthood. Four centrally important thresholds here are completing education/training, entry to employment, leaving home and forming a couple. Traditionally, the pattern of transition to adulthood was characterised by a synchrony in crossing these thresholds, as shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1: The traditional pattern of transition towards adulthood

SCHOOL

PROFESSIONAL leaving school

AT (PARENTAL ) HOME

LIFE AXIS

MARRIAGE

leaving home

CHILDHOOD

+

ADOLESCENCE

ADULTHOOD

In this framework, nothing really separates childhood from adolescence; youth does not appear as a specific phase. As Prost (1981) points out, this pattern can be seen most clearly in traditional working class transitions, especially those of young men, and has by no means disappeared entirely. At the same time, the continuing validity of this pattern has been called into question by a whole series of transformations in ways of life. In effect, w e are witnessing a postponement and a disconnection of thresholds; this is so not

136

O Galland

only for France, but across comparable European countries (see Chisholm and Bergeret 1991; Chisholm and Hurrelmann 1995). Disconnection is the more significant of the two phenomena, in that it strikes at the heart of traditional understandings of this stage of life. In the case of France, INSEE data from 1987 indicate the extent to which disconnection has occurred in the patterns of young men's transitions (as shown in Figure 2 below). INSEE (Institut National de la Statistique et des Etudes Economiques) conducts an annual employment survey covering a representative sample of 60,000 households in which each person aged 15 or older completes an individual questionnaire - each spring, and it is the results of the 1987 inquiry that have been analysed here. The data used in Figures 2 and 3 refer to the 36,783 16 to 29 year old respondents to this survey, who are representative of the French population for this age range. Data from the 1992 INSEE inquiry - the most recent available for perusal - confirm the patterns shown here; they will be released in the near future.

Figure 2: Transition towards adulthood in France for men (INSEE 1987)

The five lines in Figure 2 record the proportions of young Frenchmen crossing specific thresholds between the ages of 16 and 28: leaving school, finding paid work of some kind, securing stable employment, leaving the parental home, and forming a stable couple. The resulting median ages for the various thresholds (shown in Figure 2 as 'S' for completing education, 'P' for leaving home and 'C' for couple formation) reveal the significant gaps in timing between each. Towards the end of the 1980s, the median

Changing Family Transitions: Young People and New Ways of Life in France

137

interval between leaving school and leaving home for young Frenchmen was more than four years. The 'latent' period in between serves as a time of seeking (stable) employment. A second 'latent' period of between two and three years follows, completed by couple formation. The data show a remarkable parallelism between the curves for finding stable jobs and leaving home. In other words, for young men (stable) employment is the precondition for leaving the parental home. On the other hand, employment and leaving home are no longer directly and closely linked with couple formation, as was formerly the case. Figure 3 (below) provides the same analysis for young Frenchwomen. Here, we can see that leaving home comes, on average, two years earlier than it does for young men and is less clearly linked with achieving economic autonomy via finding employment. The medians show that young women also complete their education about a year later than do young men, so that the period between this threshold and that of leaving home lasts less than half as long, on average, than for their male peers. Forming a stable couple also (still) occurs earlier for young women than for young men - by about two years, which corresponds to the persisting average gap in age at marriage between women and men in western Europe as a whole. Significantly, in the case of young women, couple formation inserts itself between and across the thresholds that span labour market entry and stabilisation; they are, in terms of abstract patterns, setting up couple partnerships with the young men who, two years older than they themselves, have secured stable jobs and thus have left - or are poised to leave - home and who can support an independent household. In this overall sense, women's youth transitions are more 'compact' across time than are young men's; and the internal patternings of youth transitions as a whole are gender differentiated. Figure 3: Transition toward adulthood in France for women (INSEE 1987) 100

%

90 80

-

70 60

50 40 " 30 20 10 -

0

-

138

O. Galland

Youth as independent singlehood Nevertheless, these data show that for both sexes, a new life course phase is establishing itself, one which is distinct from both adolescence and adulthood. This new phase may be defined as the moment of emancipation from family of origin unaccompanied by immediate reconstitution into a new family of orientation. Strictly speaking, this implies that independent singlehood has inserted itself as a specific period of life. Some commentators have elected to term this period as 'post-adolescence', but my preference would be simply to define the term 'youth' as referring to this new phase. It is emerging in much the same way as did adolescence at the beginning of the century; denoting this development by the term youth helps to clarify that it is qualitatively different from adolescence and is patently amenable to sociological analysis. It would be quite misleading to suppose that this new phase of life is identical for and equally applicable to all young people. Figure 4 (overleaf) describes, in schematic form, the differences in the patterns of youth transitions between young men from lower and upper class backgrounds. Lower class young men's transitions patterns imply that prolongation of the period during which they continue to live at home is linked with employment instability; when they do leave home, they quickly form a couple partnership, i.e. the period of independent singlehood is short. For upper class young men, the pattern is much rather one of postponing couple formation, i.e. an extended period of independent singlehood has become established as a significant phase of life. On the basis of these kinds of differentiated patterns, we have been able to distinguish five stages of adolescence and youth in contemporary France (Cavalli and Galland 1993), as described in Figure 5 (see page 134). The prolongation of educational participation represented by stages 1 and 2 are not new developments, but they are progressively becoming the typical experience of all young people rather than that of the socially privileged alone. Presently, half of each age cohort continue on to the baccalauréat (18+ qualifications offering access to higher education). Stage 1, which covers the period of upper secondary schooling (lycée), might be defined as a phase of adolescence, in that young people remain under the control of the two major socialisation agencies of family and school. This is no longer the case during Stage 2, that of the higher education student. Recent studies show that a large proportion of French students, especially in the provincial cities, do not live with their parents during the week; they also have part-time jobs that provide them with an independent income. This second stage is characterised by intense sociability. Stage 3 is particularly relevant for working class young men, who are very much inclined to remain living at home until they have found a good job. This stage might be seen as the 'post adolescence of the common man'. In a similar way to the life of the higher education student, a largely middle class experience, the pattern represented by Stage 3 combines status elements of adolescence and of adulthood. In seeking or securing employment, these young people (especially young men) occupy adult status, but in continuing to live in the parental home, they retain aspects of adolescent status.

139

Changing Family Transitions: Young People and New Ways of Life in France

Figure 4: Male transition patterns by social class L O W ER C L A S S

8 .. .1 9

BOYS

20

21

22

23

25

24

26

CLASS BOYS

UPPER

ilfilÉfIÉI 8 . ..1 9

professional

20

21

axis

22

23

24

25

family

axis

|

education

]

military s e r v i c e

H|j

j

p reca rious j o b s

P#j

IpH

a

27

|

26

M

IIIIP 27

a

[ living at (parenta I) h om e i n d e p e n d ent s i n g l e h o o d couple formation

stab le e mp lo yme nt

Stage 3 is particularly relevant for working class young men, who are very much inclined to remain living at home until they have found a good job. This stage might be seen as the 'post adolescence of the common man'. In a similar way to the life of the higher education student, a largely middle class experience, the pattern represented by Stage 3 combines status elements of adolescence and of adulthood. In seeking or securing employment, these young people (especially young men) occupy adult status, but in continuing to live in the parental home, they retain aspects of adolescent status. Stage 4, on the other hand, applies especially to middle class youth, who are likely to postpone couple formation and having children in favour of enjoying the pleasures of independent singlehood. It is this stage, of course, that most specifically represents the new definition of youth in France. In effect, these young people display none of the features of adolescence - they are both employed and are living independently - but they have not yet definitively entered into adult status in that they have not formed a stable

140

O. Galland

couple partnership and - a fortiori - have no children. This delay in founding a family of orientation is probably the specific defining feature of the youth phase in France, where the pattern of independent singlehood appears to be particularly well established in comparison with other European countries (see CEC 1991a). At the fifth and final stage, we are no longer speaking of youth in the strict sense; as soon as a stable couple partnership is formed (with or without marriage), peer group sociability declines dramatically. Therefore, we might more profitably speak of a stage of'pre-adulthood': all that now remains in order to accede fully and definitively into adulthood is the arrival of a child, which, as we know, is taking place ever later (the average age at which French women bear their first child now stands at 26 years). Figure 5: Five stages of adolescence and youth prolongation

1 of

education

1

protongation

END OF SCHOOLING

1I

1

precarity

1 of living at hom e

COUPLE FORMATION H

1 2 3 4 5

I

M

j

l

LEAVING INDEPEN DEN T| HOME S IN G LEHOO D

1 1

H

2

adolescents at young people young people young people young couple

3

4

1

5

secondary school in h i g h e r e d u c a t i o n i n p r e c a r i o u s j o b s a n d l i v i n g at h o m e in s t a b l e e m p l o y m e n t a n d l i v i n g i n d e p e n d e n t l y / a l o n e w ithout children

How can the emerging pattern of independent singlehood represented by Stage 4 be satisfactorily explained? Extension of educational participation alone cannot suffice: on the one hand, this factor tends to delay rather than to accelerate departure from the parental home; on the other hand, the over 25s represent a very small proportion of students (in France). It is more plausible to propose that it is the prevalence of temporary and precarious employment and career opportunities that today characterises young people's situations after having completed their education and training which contributes most forcefully to postponing couple formation - but which, after a certain age, cannot hold back departure from the parental home. The plausibility of this explanation derives from recalling the traditional male model of transition to adulthood, in which establishing economic autonomy through stable employment was a prerequisite to marriage. Transposed into present circumstances, it would appear that independent singlehood is a

Changing Family Transitions: Young People and New Ways of Life in France

141

mode of life that is functionally adapted to employment/career precarity, especially where this precarity takes on an extended life of its own. Whilst continuing to live in the parental home eventually becomes unviable, it remains difficult or impossible to envisage forming a (stable and cohabiting) couple (as a prelude, however hypothetical, to having children). The 1987 INSEE data offer some clues in this respect. A reanalysis of the data (Galland 1990) indicates that the hypothesis proposed here receives strong support for those aged 25+, much less so for those under 25. In fact, when age, sex and social origin are controlled, we find that independent singlehood as a lifestyle associated with employment/career precarity can be verified for the under 25s only for upper class young men. The pattern weakens steadily as one descends the ladder of social origin. However, regardless of social origin, young women under 25 are most likely to adopt independent singlehood as a lifestyle when they have permanent employment. These findings suggest that independent singlehood is not a lifestyle enforced by economic constraint, but is rather one of deliberate choice. This raises the question of what 'choice' implies. What are the motivations that lead young people to take up and prolong the 'solitary life' of the independent single, given that traditionally, personal economic stability acts as the trigger to establish one's own family rather than to postpone doing so? I would like to propose a dual explanation for this phenomenon - which, however, cannot presently be empirically verified. To begin with, we might argue that on the scale of values and priorities, the professional axis is gaining ascendancy over the family axis, i.e. employment and career (must) take first place in the scheme of people's lives, with the result that marriage and family are (necessarily) postponed. In support of this hypothesis, we can point to the clear indications that independent singlehood and permanent employment are more strongly associated with each other for young women than for young men, regardless of social origin. It goes without saying that the decision to enter a stable couple partnership and, even more so, to have children, continues to impose more constraints on women's professional lives than on men's. Having conquered the educational terrain in terms of extent and length of participation, young women are increasingly disinclined to accept traditional roles centred on the home and motherhood. Instead, they are keen to enter fully into professional life and its demands. In doing so, they are compelled to innovate: there are few established role models from previous generations of women that offer guidance and support. Recent writing in the field of occupational and professional socialisation point to the increasing complexity of this process and the construction of identity with which it is accompanied (for both sexes). As Dubar (1991) has argued, self-image is the product of a dual transaction: the history of the family line supplies the foundation of that construction, whereas social institutions recognise - by negotiation and to varying degrees - its legitimacy. The term 'transaction' is used here in order to emphasise the character of the process of identity construction as one involving deliberation, adjustment and compromise. In the case of occupational and professional socialisation, the process extends across the whole of the life course: occupational and professional mobility and development become constitutent elements in a continuing process of social identity

142

O. Galland

formation. In this negotiating process, individuals experience what Dubar has called 'forms of identity', by which he means self-definitions that are more salient than those supplied by 'official' categories. In any event, the prolongation of educational participation has materially contributed to the increasing complexities of these processes. Whilst rates of social mobility are rising for the middle classes and the skilled working classes, gaps between the social group to which one belongs and that to which one aspires (reference group, vide Merton) have also increased. The wider these gaps become, the more difficult it becomes to construct self-definitions. Changes in the organisation of life course phases are not simply a matter of changes in occupational and professional socialisation processes, but are largely a consequence of the weakening of traditional mechanisms of intergenerational status and role transmission. These changes might, in my view, be seen as shifts in modalities of socialisation: from a model of identification to one of experimentation. In other words, status and identity are no longer primarily passed on from one generation to another. Instead, young people must construct their own identities. The model of identification is typical of 19th century France, and continues to hold significant influence, especially in farming families and communities in which the units of economic and domestic production are integrated. It can also be found in the working class model of entry to adulthood, based on the transmission of values and trade secrets - especially centred on the father as the sponsor who introduces the young (male) person into the (public) working world. This traditional model is in the process of disintegration, both because of the numerical expansion of the middle classes in the postwar decades and because universal and extended educational participation diffuses middle class norms to working class youth. But whatever the antecedents: if role and identity are no longer 'given' in accordance with social origin, then they must be (re)constructed. This can only take place progressively, on the basis of experience, resulting in self-definitions that are acceptable to the individual, to significant others, and to the broader society as a whole. The question of when young people accede to adulthood, then, is not simply a question of absolving schooling and finding employment. It marks the outcome of a complex process of construction of the self, an image which has the dual characteristics of preserving/restoring self-esteem and achieving credibility in the eyes of instituional actors. This is an iterative process - made up of comings and goings, trial and error, and successive approximations - in which a satisfactory and realistic self-definition is gradually developed. However, it would be incorrect to define youth solely from this viewpoint - that of a progressive and in some measure stressful process of identity construction. The prolongation of youth as a life phase also corresponds to a shift in the typical age at which one enters adulthood. The normative expectation specifying that young people should embrace full adulthood as soon as they have the economic means to do so - the norm of precocity - is being replaced by its inverse: that people should make the most of their youth for as long as possible. In France, this traditional norm survived through to the end of the 1970s, that is, as long as a model of educative authority existed which could support it. Under these conditions, leaving home meant, for the majority of

Changing Family Transitions: Young People and New Ways of Life in France

143

youngsters, the acquisition of freedom and independence. However, it was impossible to imagine leaving home unless one got married The crisis and dissolution of this traditional model of educative authority meant that young people no longer felt such a sense of urgency about setting up independently. In turn, a compulsion to make the most of one's youth gradually imposed itself. But what is meant by the term 'making the most of one's youth'? I think it means, essentially, practising a friendly sociability in which meeting up with friends and collectively engaging in various activities are the core foci. This enjoins a dual phenomenon of diffusion, in the Simmelian sense of the concept. Firstly, the student lifestyle extends itself beyond the end of one's student days - an independent singlehood within the context of relationships and activities with friends continues as before. The solitary life need not be solitary, so to speak (Galland 1993). On the contrary, a recent time-budget study (Galland and Garrigues 1989) suggests that this intense sociability disappears only when a stable couple is formed; sociability is at its most intense during the period of independent singlehood. Couple formation frequently marks a sudden contraction in the intensity of relations with friends. In effect, youth comes to an end with couple formation. But secondly, diffusion also takes place vertically, from the top to the bottom of the social scale, as Bourdieu has so emphatically demonstrated. Under comparable life situations, independent singlehood is indisputably more common amongst the upper classes than amongst the middle classes, and least common amongst the working classes. The systematic regularity of this pattern is beyond empirical doubt and points strongly in the direction of lifestyle diffusion from the upper to the lower echelons of society. Whatever the explanation for these phenomena, it seems clear that a disconnection between the thresholds of youth transitions on the professional as opposed to the family axis has taken root. Transition to employment and career is no longer linked closely to the transition towards residential autonomy and family formation, with the phase of independent singlehood having inserted itself into the process for specific and - by diffusion - increasing groups of young people. Precisely what the consequences of the role and status ambiguities, incongruities and contradictions might be, we cannot presently tell. But it is implausible to conclude that the consequences will be sociologically inconsequential.

From School to Work in a Transitional Society: Changing Patterns in Russia Ljudmila

Koklyagina

Youth transitions under Communism: education, training and jobs for all Following the 1917 Revolution, the Soviet education system was reformed in conformity with the needs of the new regime. By the Stalinist era, the push to industrialise generated a demand for an appropriately skilled workforce; one of the significant developments in this context was the establishment of Rabfacs, workers' faculties (Matthews 1982). The basic aim of the Soviet educational system lay in the training of a skilled labour force to supply the needs of the national economy. This priority was reflected in school curricula, in the allocation of the 'potential labour force' (i.e. children and young people) to different kinds of schools, and state-controlled distribution of people to jobs. From 1975, universal access to secondary education through to a given age became a constitutional guarantee in the Soviet Union. By this time, as in other advanced industrial economies, the formal education system had become the main mechanism of training and qualification, and young people were spending ever longer at school, college and university before entering the labour market (Cross and Payne 1991). State socialism's main declared aim was to achieve social homogeneity of life chances and quality of life; the uniformity of the educational system was regarded as the main means of working towards this aim (Philippov 1980; Rutkevitch and Rubina 1988). However, regional disparity always played an important role in young people's educationwork transition chances in the Soviet Union. Economic planning foresaw differently structured regional economies and consequently varying skills and qualifications demands, i.e., an intentional spatial division of labour existed. This meant, in turn, that the kinds of education and training opportunities offered by the regional organisation of education systems differed accordingly. The first, 'preliminary' distribution of the 'potential labour force' between different kinds of schools was of crucial importance in terms of subsequent educational trajectories, since the logic of allocation and distribution operated on the basis of an essentially non-reversible flow model with ever-finer branches that ultimately resulted in a self-evident distribution to specific jobs. Secondary education was, consequently, not genuinely integrated into a comprehensive system: general secondary schools were flanked by vocational schools, specialised colleges and led on to a highly differentiated higher education sector. During the 1970s and 1980s, Soviet

146

L. Koklyagina

education policy was characterised by a marked expansion in the numbers of secondary schools in urban areas, in particular of vocational education schools. This expansion especially in the metropolitan urban centres - was partly funded by industrial enterprises in response to the new labour force skill demands prompted by rapid industrial development. Regional differentiation and selective education provision was joined, of course, by the continuity of social inequalities in access and outcomes. Formally, young people in education and training were regarded as of 'transitional social status'; their social status was a combination between that of their parents and their future social status - which was predictable on the basis of the education and training trajectory they were following (Philippov 1976). Those who were attending a university or an equivalent form of higher education were, therefore, allocated to the highest status group on this second criterion (Startseva 1985; Shoubkin 1984). The aim was not to eradicate differences in outcome, but rather differences in life chances, thus reducing or eliminating systematic intergenerational correlation between social statuses. In reality, significant inequalities of social and educational opportunity remained persistent. Attempts were made to rectify the waste of talent that resulted, most recently as part of the 1984 educational reform act, which adjusted the regulations that specified the proportional distribution of young people going on to the different kinds of upper secondary education. These adjustments were intended both to respond better to economic needs and to accommodate better young people's own preferences and abilities together with parental wishes and teachers' recommendations. This legislation also introduced, for the first time, elements of decentralisation into educational planning and provision itself. Most importantly, perhaps, the 1984 act specified that in future, three quarters of each age cohort should continue on to complete upper level secondary education, i.e., rather than leaving at 15 to go into training and employment. The term 'labour market 1 was unknown in Soviet sociology - it made little sense in a centrally planned economy that did not recognise markets as regulators. Job markets did not exist either; people were compulsorily distributed to occupations and workplaces, and their own wishes were not a priority (Shoubkin and Cherednichenko 1985). Young people, on leaving full-time education and training, were obliged to enter employment. Had they not done so within three months, a system of sanctions was initiated in which they were forced to take a particular job or face punishments meted out by the state. There was a difficulty, however: those who had completed secondary education but were unable to go on to higher education could not necessarily find or be found jobs that matched their qualifications. This is one reason, for example, for the expansion of vocational training within the general secondary school system, so that young people would leave school not only with educational qualifications but also certified vocational skills. Once more, the question of young people's occupational preferences was much less important than perceived 'social needs': young people were basically viewed as a labour resource. Studies of young Siberians' social and vocational orientations in the 1960s and 1970s, however, showed a

From School to Work in a Transitional Society: Changing Patterns in Russia

147

clear misfit between economic and labour planning and young people's own occupational aspirations. Once having left full-time education, young people's options were constrained not only by the job allocation system but also by the residence permit regulations. Young people living in rural areas who wished to move to towns and cities could only do so if they were allocated to an urban workplace. Those, on the other hand, who wished to stay in the city were obliged to continue living with their parents. Young people experienced, then, strongly regulated transitions to adult life; there were few decisions that they could genuinely and freely make from a range of options.

The dislocation of regulated transitions between education and work The regions of the former Soviet Union began the process of transition to market economies from the mid-1980s. The rapid social changes that characterise this process include shifts in the ways in which young people are now entering the evolving labour markets. Within these changes, regional differences have lost none of their significance and are intimately connected with social dislocation and migration patterns. In the industrially advanced regions of the Federation, the occupational structure of the labour market is shifting from a predominance of skilled manual to non-manual and specialist employment. These regions attract high rates of in-migration, especially by young people. In less industrialised regions, industrial employment is increasing at the expense of agricultural occupations, with characteristically socially dislocating effects. What tends to happen overall is that those already living in a particular city or region aspire to enter employment of a higher status and qualification level than that traditionally offered locally - they crowd towards the newly developing sectors and branches - whereas those living in rural or less economically developed areas are attracted to migrate to find industrial employment in the cities and more developed regions. A chain of dislocation and migration results in which everyone aspires to move 'up and out' and few wish to stay where they are - occupationally, socially and regionally (Koklyagina 1992). The PGLS cohort survey, which has traced young Russians' school-to-work transitions between 1985 and - most recently - 1993, has been able to document these processes as they have taken place 1 . In 1988/9 and four years after leaving school, the young adult respondents (then aged 22 - 24) were, by and large, indistinguishable from the regional labour force as a whole in terms of their occupational distribution. This means that in industrial regions, between a quarter and half of the sample respondents were employed in construction and heavy industry; in agricultural regions, they were mainly employed in agricultural occupations. On the other hand, they were more likely to be employed in sales, catering and service industries than one would expect on the basis of the overall distribution of their parental generation in a given region. By this time, then, shifts in labour market structures were beginning to emerge: partly new divisions of labour, but also the expansion of second jobs or 'moonlighting' - usually

148

L. Koklyagina

on a self-employed and grey economy basis - in order to earn sufficient income in a period of accelerating inflation. The new forms of economic activity that have begun to emerge in Russia have indeed attracted young people to set up cooperatives and engage in trading and financial speculation, including as black market enterprises (Koklyagina 1993). However, we should be wary of over-inflating the overall significance of these activities: only one in ten of the cohort survey respondents reported in 1988/9 that their employment was outside the regular, established system. In fact, the most recent findings from the cohort survey show that between a third and two thirds of the respondents (according to region) were in jobs to which they had been allocated by their local state authorities in the timehonoured manner, rather than having found employment on their own initiative. The cohort sweeps also point towards significant and continuing differences in the relative proportions of young people in the labour market and in education at similar ages and stages: the proportions in full-time employment are higher in industrial areas. This suggests that continuing on with education is not necessarily an intrinsic choice, or rather, that employment is more attractive where it is available. In fact, with some regional exceptions (such as in agricultural areas), the proportions of schoolleavers going on to university have declined across recent years, which may well be a consequence of dislocations in income hierarchies and distributions. Certainly a number of reports from post-communist European societies have drawn attention to the 'taxidriving professor' and 'street-seller teacher' phenomenon, and there is some evidence that young people are quite unsure about the relative employment prospects for the bestqualified as opposed to those prepared to take (for example) unskilled jobs in construction (Mitter, Weiß and Schäfer 1992; Hettlage 1994). In any event, compared with previous studies, the PGLS cohort survey findings indicate an increasing tendency for young adults to combine full-time employment with part-time education (for example, via correspondence courses). Between the 1988/9 and 1993 sweeps, both part-time employment and self-employment have become more common for the survey respondents who, it should be noted, are now in their mid to late twenties. In 1993 and aged between 26 and 28, the majority of the respondents are employed either full-time or part-time and in state enterprises (of all kinds, including government employment). This is the case for some four fifths of the respondents living in the Tula (Central Russia) and Kurgan (Urals) regions, but for only 57% of those living in the Moscow region. Private sector employment is booming in Moscow: 30% were employed here in 1993. In contrast, the contracting regions of central Russia and the Urals find themselves in an intermediate stage of transition to a multiplicity of regional economies, in which joint ventures and joint stock companies are playing an important role in recruiting young adults. In the Tula region, only 8% of the respondents had private sector jobs, in the Urals 18%. However, whereas in Moscow only 5% were employed in joint venture enterprises, this was the case for 13% of those in the Tula region and 9% of those in the Urals. Respondent unemployment rates in the Tula and Urals regions are up to double those for the Moscow region (5/6% compared with 3%); and only in Moscow

From School to Work in a Transitional Society: Changing Patterns in Russia

149

do we still find a sizeable proportion (8%) of respondents in full-time education. The continuing significance of public sector government employment in all three regions is worth emphasising, too: this accounts for some 46% of the respondent sample overall, with regional differences relatively slight. In sum - and although cohort unemployment rates are no higher than for the adult population at large - these young people have experienced the transition to adulthood as one of risk and déstabilisation rather than the guaranteed stabilisation they grew up to expect, having completed their secondary education before the collapse of the Soviet Union. Our respondents, asked for their views on what determines success in life, have coped with the contradictions between communist and post-communist norms and realities by fitting their interpretations to their personal experiences - as one might expect. In effect, it is those who have been successful in the new Russia who affirm that their opportunities have improved and that the new situation offers them the chance to develop independence and personal autonomy.

Conclusions: accelerated transitions in uncertain times In the midst of economic upheaval, the 1991 and 1993 coups d'état represented a real danger for the transition to democracy and a market economy; they also accelerated young people's involvement in economic and political life, despite their intense preoccupation (realistically enough) with personal problems and distancing from public politics. Political cynicism has been one of the outcomes of the 'over-ideologised' context in which today's young Russians grew up; but political disaffection and disinterest amongst young people in Europe as a whole is by no means a peculiarly Russian phenomenon. More pertinent, perhaps, is that the instabilities occasioned by Perestroika have unseated established social norms, values and status hierarchies, offering spaces that are not only risky and irritating but also attractive and giddying. Young people have been able to throw off old ideas and ways quite readily, often accepting new realities at face value - for example, flexible occupational and employment markets in which formal qualifications no longer play the role they formerly did in regulating access and recruitment. Private sector employment and self-employment is attractive to young people in the first instance because it promises the chance to make a 'fast buck', but also because it promises a combination between having responsibility and having adventure, having fun a quite new employment experience. Subsequently, they realise that employers' demands are increasingly high and competition pressures are intensifying: the attractions have their price. Making good money means exposing oneself to high level risks, an unfamiliar and irritating phenomenon for those who grew up in a society that offered life-long guaranteed security. What do these risks look like for the individual? One of our Moscow respondents described his entry into economic life as follows:

150

L. Koklyagina

"[Beginning by] working for a furniture factory, I started to make money out of a small business [on the side] by buying and selling goods, that is, resale of the reject quality goods [produced in the factory]. It was much better than simply working."

What is interesting here is that 'making money' is something different from 'working 1 , which means being employed in a state enterprise under the former employment system. This young man had managed to establish a permanent network of deliverers and customers for his business sideline; he had developed his own export 'charter trade' routes into Poland, taking his goods to sell there and buying up Polish goods (clothing, audio and video equipment) that he could sell back in Moscow. This kind of business is at least quasi-illegal in that it survives, amongst other things, by tax evasion. Yet our respondent noted that small businesses like this one can only operate on this kind of basis in the Russian context. Unsurprisingly, the dislocation of established education-work transitions has contributed to the emergence of a generation gap: young people must learn to deal with economic and social relations with which their parents have kad no experience and about which they can thus offer little knowledge and advice. The regulation of life chances now operates under a different logic: it is no longer achieved status and loyalty to the regime that count, rather personal merit and practical initiative. Dependent security within predictability is replaced by independent choice within uncertainty and risk. The respondent quoted above reported, in describing the differences between his own and his mother's perspectives on life: "I say to her 'Mum, you were very naive' when we talk about the hard times through which the family had to survive in the past. She says 'I am not naive. I simply had a very optimistic character, and if this had not been the case, I would probably be dead by now!'"

The contrasts between the 'then' and 'now' in relation to education and work might be summarised as follows: Table 1: School to work transitions for parents and for young people For Parents

For Young People

compulsory and universal state education system free of charge

multiple and mixed system of public and private provision partially subject to fees

guaranteed full-time employment

non-guaranteed flexible employment with the risk of unemployment

state-employment allocated ofjobs and workplaces

free market for jobs and labour

formal gender equality in employment

gender-segregated labour market emergence of age-segregation in the job market

The changes in education-work transitions cannot simply, however, be reduced to contrasts such as these. Whereas in western Europe, the patterns of youth transitions

From School to Work in a Transitional Society: Changing Patterns in Russia

151

havetypically moved towards extension and fragmentation (see Banks, Bates, Breakwell, Bynner, Emler, Jamieson and Roberts 1992; Cavalli and Galland 1993; Chisholm and Hurrelmann 1995), those in Russia have moved rather into acceleration and fragmentation. The age cohort surveyed in the PGLS study, now aged in their mid to late twenties, certainly stayed in full-time education and training longer (between 11 and 16 years) than would be typical for much of western Europe. At least a third and up to half of the respondents (depending on region) only secured their first stable job at age 25. At the same time, many had taken on casual jobs before they were 16; this had been the case for almost two fifths of the male respondents from the Moscow region. By the time our respondents had reached the age of 18, the majority had some form of part-time employment. The sharp jump in educational participation immediately following the abolition (in 1991) of the state system of job allocation was a short-term consequence of the gap that suddenly opened up as a consequence of this measure. Schoolleavers had no vocational training tracks to move onto en route to employment, in that the old system had been dismantled but no new one was ready to take its place. The eagerness to get out and earn money is a distinctive feature of contemporary Russian education-work transitions - and it is something of which parents do not wholly approve, it would seem. At least, acceleration into earning money early, alongside their studies, is a development that attracts public interest and debate. A recent edition of the Russian weekly Argumenti i Facty published an article which described its extent amongst senior secondary school pupils in St. Petersburg (Nikitina 1994). The kind of work they did ranged across secretarial jobs, designing computer software, making toys, distributing advertising material, resale of goods, sale of handicrafts they make themselves, selling newspapers and washing cars. It is not difficult to see why all these activities are attractive - and possibly a good deal more attractive than continuing one's education. Those who sell newspapers, for example, can earn between between three and twenty thousand roubles per day. Average earnings in the Russian Federation in early 1994 were sixty thousand roubles per month. Note l The PGLS cohort study is comparing school-to-work transitions in Russia, Estonia and the UK. The Russian research is currently funded by a one-year grant from the Central European University Research Support Scheme (grant no. 741/93). The first sweep was conducted in 1983/84, a year after the respondents had left school (aged 17/18); the second sweep in 1988/9; and the third sweep in 1993. The first sweep covered 10-12% of all schoolleavers in each region, or about 17,000 respondents in the case of the Russian Federation, where the selected regions were eastern and western Siberia, the Urals and the central economic district. The sample was drawn proportionately from general secondary schools, vocational secondary schools and secondary technical colleges. Response rates in the first and second sweeps reached one third in Russia and two thirds in Estonia. Financial constraints make it impossible to attempt to trace respondents who have moved out of their region of origin. The comparative analysis uses 534 Sweep I respondents and 684 Sweep II respondents from both Russia and Estonia. The Sweep III Russian sample is 1900. The British cohorts for each sweep number 882.

Gender Segregation in the Estonian Labour Market: Stability, not Change Rein Voormann

Introduction Women's labour force participation rates in the former Soviet Union were the highest in the industrialised world. By recent decades, over nine tenths of the female population of working age were either in employment or education and women comprised over half of the active labour force. At first glance, these figures supported the authorities' claim that the principle of gender equality in educational and occupational opportunities had been achieved, and in turn, that women enjoyed full economic independence from men as well as equal social and political participation as citizens. Both scholarly and popular literature presented gender equality as a positive achievement of state socialism in eastern Europe. The fact that women and men continued to occupy different jobs in different sectors and at different levels received far less attention. This paper looks at the past and present situation in Estonia, formerly part of the former Soviet Union, with respect to labour market segregation by sex. Were the patterns similar to those in the Soviet Union as a whole, and is it possible to detect any changes as a consequence of the transition to a market economy and to political independence? Given the radical transformations taking place in Estonian economic and occupational structure, we might expect that established patterns of gender segregation shift and perhaps weaken, especially amongst the younger generations, who have found themselves quite suddenly placed in quite new life situations. Comparable data from the early 1980s and the early 1990s are used to explore these issues. Western social science literature has traditionally used two kinds of explanations to account for job segregation by sex: those that focus on the characteristics of the workers themselves (human capital theory) and those that focus on the characteristics of the jobs (gender discrimination theory) (Treiman and Hartmann 1981). Human capital theory proposes that women plan their lives differently from the way men do, fundamentally because women expect to (have to) withdraw from the labour market (at least temporarily) in order to raise their children (Mincer and Polachek 1974, 1978). Women therefore expect that their labour force participation will be discontinuous in nature and take this into account when they make educational and occupational choices and decisions. Thus, female-dominated occupations - which young women still disproportionately enter -

154

R. Vijormann

were believed to demand fewer qualifications and training, offer relatively higher starting wages but in the long run give less return on 'investment' on the part of their incumbents (Becker 1975; Zellner 1975). Men, on the other hand, expect continuous labour market participation and are prepared to enter jobs that may pay less to begin with but offer higher long-term returns. It is these differentiated decision-making processes, arising from gender-specific life circumstances and prospects, that produce 'gendered' occupations in terms of their staffing distribution by sex. However, research that has attempted to demonstrate the effects of human capital theory in practice has been able to show little gender differentiation in this respect; women's and men's choices and decisions simply do not account for much of the variance as far as labour market segregation by sex is concerned (England 1984; England and Greary 1987; Tomaskovic-Devey 1993). In consequence, key commentators in the field conclude that gender discrimination structures and processes provide the only plausible explanation (Treiman and Roos 1983; Sorensen 1989). This view is supported by the fact that certain occupations are effectively closed to women. Although few countries retain occupational exclusions with legal force, socially and culturally many occupations are firmly held to be 'men's work' (Bergmann 1986). Women are obliged to 'crowd' into the occupations men do not claim for themselves usually less well paid and less secure sectors with poorer advancement prospects - and these then become labelled as 'women's work'. For those unfamiliar with the country, Estonia is one of the smallest states in Europe with its own language and specific modern culture. One million of the country's inhabitants are ethnic Estonians; a further half million come from other groups (mainly Russians, Ukrainians and Belarussians), many of whom came to live in Estonia during the Soviet era. After 1990, new legislation established immigration quotas, and in-migration began to fall. By 1993, Estonia registered a net out-migration of 13,779 inhabitants. The birth rate has also declined quite sharply in recent years. At the end of the 1980s it was fairly stable at about replacement rate, but whereas in 1989 24,300 children were born, by 1993 the number had fallen to 15,200. Age at marriage remains relatively young in comparison with elsewhere in northern Europe: of those women born between 1960-64, 28% had married before reaching the age of 20; 41% of those men born between 1955-59 had married by the age of 23. However, the divorce rate is relatively high: at least half of all marriages are ultimately dissolved. The education system in Estonia, as elsewhere in the former Soviet Union, was a mixture between a uniform Soviet and a localised Estonian model. The most immediate practical change in the education system following independence has been the establishment of teaching/learning in Estonian throughout primary, secondary and higher education, although Russian language schools continue to exist alongside. The specialised secondary schools typical of the Soviet system have begun to give way to more general colleges, and 'alternative' schools are gaining in popularity. Taking a longer-term view, the educational qualification levels of Estonians have risen rapidly over the past three decades. The 1970 Census recorded that just under a quarter (23.4%) of male employees had completed general or vocational secondary education, whilst 6.9% had higher education

Gender Segregation in the Estonian Labour Market: Stability, not Change

155

diplomas. Less than a decade later, in 1979, these proportions had risen to 36.1% and 10.5% respectively; by 1989, 51.7% and 14.2%. Women's educational qualification levels were already higher than those of men in 1970, when 30.8% had completed secondary education and 7.1% higher education. In 1979 these figures had risen to 44.1% and 11.1%, by 1989 57.8% and 15.9% (Statistical Office ofEstonia 1991, 41-2). Economic and industrial development took place quite rapidly over this period of time, in conformity with Soviet policy. Relative lack of raw materials (except oil shale and phosporite) means that light industry and food processing are the most prominent sectors. Unsurprisingly, the industrial employment sector accounts for the largest proportion of the employed labour force. At the same time, the transformation to a market economy has caused problems: with the collapse of the former Soviet markets, Estonia found itself in 1993 exporting goods to 118 countries but importing from 145. Industrial production declined by 19% between 1992 and 1993 (Statistical Office ofEstonia 1994).

The paths of a generation study This study is part of a larger set of longitudinal surveys that were initiated in sixteen regions of the former Soviet Union in 1982, including Estonia, and continued through to the present (Titma and Koklyagina 1990; and see Koklyagina, this volume). It takes the form of a panel sample survey of 3,400 17/18-year-olds leaving secondary education institutions in 1982/3, and who were followed up a decade later in 1992/3, by which time they were aged 27/28. The follow-up survey sample included the 2,466 respondents who resided in Estonia and were successfully located at that time via the Estonian Address Bureau in Tallinn. The sample reflects the distribution of young people across what were, in the early 1980s, the three main types of Soviet secondary education: specialist, general academic and vocational schools. In the selected schools, a final year class was randomly drawn into the study and all pupils in that class were included in the sample. Closed format questionnaires were administered during school time by researchers and in the absence of all school personnel. In the follow-up survey, similar (but not identical) questionnaires were personally administered in face-to-face interviews.

Occupational segregation by sex in Estonia Extent and type of educational participation act as 'pre-sorting' mechanisms for labour market distribution. This is so not only for western Europe but was also the case in the Soviet bloc countries (Lapidus 1979; Anderson 1987). At secondary education level, girls and boys tended to pursue different paths: girls continued in general, more 'academic' schooling whilst boys more often opted to pursue vocational education and training. This had a knock-on effect in post-compulsory and higher education. The quality of education received at vocational schools was such that pupils could not hope to pass university

156

R. Vôôrmann

entrance examinations, even if in principle they were entitled to apply for a place. Since the proportion of those attending vocational schools in Estonia was twice as high for boys than for girls (29% compared with 15% at the time of the first survey in 1982/3), this inevitably led to a certain féminisation of higher education in Estonia. Nine tenths of university students have attended general/academic secondary schools, amongst whose pupils girls are over-represented. Overall, this means that - in common with many western European countries - girls and young women do at least as well as boys and young men in terms of formal educational achievement and qualification. Similarly, their educational and qualification advantage is not repeated in the labour market. In state socialist economies, occupational reward structures were, of course, rather different from those in the West, in that 'intellectual' occupations requiring high qualifications were not necessarily high income occupations. Professional occupations enjoying high prestige and income in western societies - such as medicine - were less privileged in Soviet bloc countries and employed higher proportions of women than typical in many western countries. However, whatever is responsible for occupational segregation by sex in Estonia, it is most certainly not due to women's lesser education and qualification levels. Table 1 (overleaf) records the occupational sector distribution of our study respondents in their first jobs after having left school in 1982/3 and ten years later in 1992/3. At 17/18 years of age, the young women were particularly to be found entering professional and semi-professional occupations and in clerical and services jobs. Their male peers, on the other hand, were very likely to have entered skilled and semi-skilled industrial occupations. Of the few young people of either sex who had gone into managerial occupations at that time, young men outnumbered young women by four to one. In contrast, of the even smaller proportions of schoolleavers going into agricultural work, young women outnumbered young men by two to one. Ten years later, this genderdifferentiated pattern of sectorial distribution had changed little, thus accounting for the stability of the 'index of dissimilarity' across the period, which measures the extent to which women and men are un/evenly distributed across the occupational sectors shown in the table. Greater numbers of 27/28-year-olds are now to be found in managerial occupations, but men still outnumber women by three to one. Women have increased their representation in professional occupations still further, a consequence of the higher education qualifications they will have disproportionately gained in the interim. Fewer women are in service occupations than had been the case for their first jobs. The proportions of both sexes employed in skilled and semi-skilled industrial work have fallen noticeably. This shift has been of greater overall significance for men, of course, since a far higher proportion of them are employed in these two sectors than was or is the case for women. Male 'redistribution' has, however, mainly moved in the direction of managerial jobs, to a small extent into services and agriculture - but not, in contrast with women, into the professions and semi-professions, where the proportions of males employed in these sectors have remained more or less stable.

Gender Segregation in the Estonian Labour Market: Stability, not Change

157

Table 1: Occupational distribution of employed young persons by gender (in %) Occupations

First job Men

Job at the time of the second follow-up

Women

Men

Women

4.6

1.4

14.0

5.0

2. Professionals

12.0

20.2

11.5

27.3

3. Semi-professionals

1. Managers

11.2

24.2

11.4

23.6

4. Clerks

1.6

15.4

1.3

14.1

5. Services Workers

1.0

13.1

3.3

9.3

6. Agricultural workers

2.1

4.6

4.2

4.1

7. Semi-skilled industrial workers

33.7

15.0

27.5

9.4

8. Skilled industrial workers

30.6

3.1

23.4

2.7

9. Unskilled workers

3.2

3.0

3.4

4.5

Total (%)

100.0

100.0

100.0

100.0

Number

(896)

(1,187)

(765)

(940)

Index of dissimilarity

49.6

47.85

To date, transformation processes in the Estonian economy do not appear to have led to a noticeable weakening of gendered occupational segregation W e might reasonably hypothesise that these processes have begun to have some effects on the occupational structure in general, but that these tend to be gender-specific effects that do not affect gender segregation as such. Hence, for men, declining proportions of skilled and semiskilled industrial workers are coupled with rising proportions of male managers and - to a lesser extent - service employees; for women, declining representation in service and semi-skilled jobs is accompanied by rising proportions of women in professional and - to a lesser extent - in managerial occupations. It is, in any case, difficult to separate the effects of transformation processes (which are also of a recent and ongoing nature) from those which would have 'naturally' arisen under former conditions as cohorts of labour market entrants progress 'across and up' occupational and career ladders as they get older and more qualified/experienced. Table 2 (overleaf) offers a similar break-down by sex and between the two survey dates, this time from the point of view of economic/industrial (as opposed to occupational) sector (totals vary between Tables 1 and 2 in that only usable responses were included in the analyses). One significant aspect of this breakdown is the strong representation of the agricultural sector amongst the first jobs held by the study cohort in 1982/3, and especially amongst the young men. By 1992/3, men had departed from this sector in large numbers. Under former planned economy conditions, the agricultural sector was considerably more extensive in terms of occupational variety, i.e. its labour force was by

158

R. Vôôrmann

no means composed of agricultural workers in the classic sense of the term. This explains the difference between the proportions of the sample employed in agriculture in Tables 1 and 2, quite apart from the break-up of the agricultural sector as formerly organised in the transition to a market economy. In contrast, many more men had moved into service and commercial branches (whereas women's representation in these now rapidly-expanding sectors had fallen slightly). Men's presence in public administration and state security has also risen almost fourfold amongst this sample between 1982/3 and 1992/3, much more so than has been the case for the female respondents. These kinds of shifts are typical of the ways in which, over time, women 'lose ground' in the labour market - specifically, by gradual exclusion from the more desirable positions and prospects, from promising 'career tracks'. We would not have expected many respondents of either sex to have secured first jobs in public administration and state security - just as few had been employed in education, science, culture and medicine at first. But in these latter sectors, the proportions of both women and men have risen significantly and relatively gender-proportionately between 1982/3 and 1992/3. This is not so in the case of public administration and state security. Table 2: Branch distribution of employed young people by gender (in %) Branch of economy

First job

Job at the time of the second follow-up

Men

Women

Men

Women

37.9

15.4

25.7

12.8

Energy

3.6

2.7

5.5

2.5

Construction,

7.7

1.9

2.5

1.1

13.7

4.2

14.2

3.9

7.1

12.5

8.0

9.9 4.7

Agriculture

Building materials Light/Food Industries Service, Commerce Communications, Transport

10.8

3.9

7.8

Information, Statistics

1.4

1.5

1.6

1.1

Finances, Insurance

0.2

1.2

0.8

1.4

2.1

3.0

7.5

4.4

9.9

23.1

9.0

26.3

Medicine

1.3

9.3

1.4

11.2

Other

0.4

0.5

6.8

3.0

Total (%)

100.0

100.0

100.0

100.0

Number

(899)

(1,188)

(771)

(943)

Public Administration, State Security Education, Science, Culture

Index of dissimilarity

45.6

36.1

Gender Segregation in the Estonian Labour Market: Stability, not Change

159

Overall, however, the data in Table 2 indicate that, whilst the shifts in economic/industrial distribution over time have followed broadly similar patterns for both sexes, they have been more marked for men than for women. Once more, part of the reason for this lies in gender-specific paths through working life, which are accompanied by increasing vertical gender segregation in occupational and job hierarchies, regardless of what happens to horizontal gender segregation patterns between occupations and sectors. At the same time, there is every reason to suppose that some changes - especially those for men - are a consequence of the effects of the transition process on economic and industrial structures. The 'index of dissimilarity' for Table 2 also shows a noticeable reduction in the degree of gender segregation in the labour market from this standpoint. The reasons undoubtedly have more to do with the decline in or sudden collapse of traditionally maledominated branches (particularly in agro-industry, engineering and production industries), which have prompted or forced young men to switch occupations and branches or to strike old job options from their plans, than they have to do with women's incursion into a wider and 'gender-innovative' range of occupations, branches and hierarchical levels. In other words, changes in opportunity and reward structures that are accompanying transformation processes have not necessarily improved young women's (already poorer) labour market prospects, but they have certainly worsened those young men's chances who would gone into jobs and branches that are now in decline and who are unable to take advantage of the new opportunities offered in services, commerce and the 'new entrepreneurship'. Is this another example of plus ga change ... ?

Concluding remarks The transition from school to work is difficult at any time, but it is especially complicated when the basic social fabric is changing at the same time and economic conditions are deteriorating. Young adults on Estonia today completed their schooling before the social upheavals accompanying the break-up of the Soviet Union took hold. Under former conditions, it was assumed that young people's life courses were primarily shaped by individual choices. In fact, the youth phase and transition to adulthood was strongly institutionalised. The structuring of educational opportunities and labour market conditions had a stronger impact on educational careers, occupational choices/decisions and occupational/career histories than did personal goals and values. The main difference between Eastern and Western Europe lay in the tying of opportunity to economy rather than to education and occupation. The social hierarchy of economic sectors is changing radically under the conditions of transition, in particular through the emergence of the new private, non-state sector - not only in trades and services, but also in industry and agriculture. This implies that the significance of human capital on work careers may change too. Our data show that young Estonians are actively taking up these new opportunities, are free from 'old-style' thinking and can adapt themselves successfully to the new situation. Young people's occupational values have become more similar to those of

160

R. Voormann

young Westerners. In particular, the altruistic values (to be useful to others, to serve society) that were formerly highly ranked have been replaced by pragmatic values (rewards, job security). Nevertheless, the problem of unemployment is not to be underestimated, and there is a shortage of more attractive/desirable jobs. Young people are especially vulnerable to employers' present tendencies to demand not only qualifications but also job experience - and in this stronger competition for jobs, gender can be a significant factor in influencing employers' recruitment choices.

Growing Up and Social Change in Slovenia Mirjana Ule

Introduction Slovenian youth in the 1990s is growing up within a series of transitions. These transitions are, specifically, transitions from modern to post-modern society, from socialist to post-socialist society, and from the former federal state of Yugoslavia to an independent state, the Republic of Slovenia. Furthermore, the regions surrounding Slovenia are still dominated by armed strife. Within these transitions, Slovenia stands in a special relation to other central and eastern post-socialist states. Specifically, Slovenia was considered the most economically advanced of the former Yugoslav republics. Experimenting with adapting socialism to changing times was characteristic for Slovenia. Owing to its proximity to western Europe and to more effective information links with its western neighbours, Slovenian youth has been able, since the 1960s, to remain up-to-date regarding youth cultural trends in the west. These trends include those value- and paradigmshifts which are characteristic for the transition from modern to post-modern culture. In this sense Slovenian youth exemplifies continual processes of transition from 'socialist youth' to modern European youth. The distinctiveness of Slovenian youth in comparison with young people in other Yugoslavian republics during the 1970s and 1980s was empirically demonstrated by studies of sociopolitical dispositions, life-styles and valueorientations (Ule 1986; Aleksic, Ule and Vrcan 1985). By the same token, as the Yugoslav crisis escalated, Slovenian youth succeeded in freeing themselves from the ideology, politics, and institutions of the former state. So, in a Freudian sense, on both the personal and generational levels, they 'settled the score with theirs fathers'. This was by no means a classical clash of generations but rather a transgenerational process of changing the political system from the inside out. Unfortunately, this did not happen throughout the rest of Yugoslavia. Instead they simply 'transferred' status from the old fathers (i.e. Tito, the Party) to new ones (the nation, new nationalist leaders). This chapter presents some of the findings of the first post-socialist era survey of Slovenian youth, conducted in May/June 1993 with a representative sample of 2,310 young people - reported in full in Ule and Miheljak (1993) 1 Following an initial summary of the main problems young Slovenians see themselves as presently facing, information about their values and orientations - especially in relation to the rise of nationalist views -

M. Ule

162

precedes a typological sketch of Slovenian youth cultures. Conclusions about the ways in which young people are responding to and coping with contemporary transformation and transition close the discussion.

Young people's problems The survey results indicate that Slovenia is atypical among 'latecomer societies' with respect to contemporary European modernisation processes. Young Slovenians are growing up with a relatively high standard of living, have access to good quality education and have hi-tech communication media at their disposal. Table 1 (below) suggests that relative affluence is taken pretty much for granted, in that young people judge they are better off than were Slovenians a decade ago, at least in some respects. Table 1: How do you estimate living conditions today with respect to some years

(in %) employment housing education travel entertainment clothing

ago?

better than before

worse than before

3.7 3.0 30.9 45.1 62.1 65.8

83.4 52.5 24.2 23.1 10.4 6.8

Source: All tables: Ule and Miheljak 1993

However, it is equally clear that young people are very aware of uncertain employment prospects and poorer housing opportunities. It is travel, entertainment and clothing - the consumer society - that they judge to be much more positive in the new Slovenia. The data in general show young people in the 1990s are an anxious and frightened generation. Economic problems are their biggest problem, but alcohol and drug abuse is almost as serious an issue in their view, as shown in Table 2 (below). Table 2: What are the main problems

(in %) unemployment alcohol, drugs lack of money problems with school loneliness monotony conflicts with adults

of young people in Slovenia

today?

very serious problems

no problem at all

72.1 68.6 47.0 35.5 31.0 23.2 18.5

0.9 7.0 1.4 2.9 7.8 20.1 3.3

Unemployment is a recent phenomenon for Slovenia, consequent upon the transition to a free market economy and the loss of former Yugoslavian markets for its goods. In the

Growing Up and Social Change in Slovenia

163

mid-1980s, and in contrast to the situation in other Yugoslav republics, youth unemployment was insignificant in Slovenia. Between 1989 and 1993 the numbers of unemployed Slovenians multiplied ten-fold to reach some 200,000 persons. The young and the unskilled are the groups most vulnerable to unemployment; interesting, women's unemployment rates are slightly lower than are men's. In 1992, the general unemployment rate reached 7.1%, but 30% of the registered unemployed were aged 15 to 25. Since the second wave baby-boom generation will swell the numbers of labour market entrants again towards the end of the 1990s, we can predict the problem of unemployment will persist or worsen (unless economic regeneration improves sharply in the near future).

Young people's value orientations Postmodern values are observable amongst Slovenian youth as they are in western Europe. Characteristic in the Slovenian context is a gradual distance from major social issues, ideologies, and 'historical stories' in the world of privacy and individual experience. The set of guiding values and desires indicates a preference for global and fundamental post-material values such as world peace and inner peace, friendship, family security, freedom and caring. However, young people do not esteem nor do they identify with institutionalised politics, religion, or the military. Survey findings for 1985 and 1993 indicate a strenghtening of these patterns; Table 3 below shows the results of this latest inquiry. Table 3: How important are these things for you? (in %) to be in charge of my own life peaceful family circles and friendship material well-being to become famous in my profession entertain yourself as much as you want to have a reputation in society to become famous in sports, music or show-business to be in position of leadership national identity to take part in political activities

most important 75.0 67.1 60.0 56.3 51.1 37.0 28.7 25.7 24.4 4.7

Being in charge of one's own life and enjoying peaceful family and friendship relations are very clearly at the top of young people's priorities in life. However, material well-being hardly a post-material value in itself - takes third place. This is not surprising under current circumstances, and it can also be argued that the importance placed on materialist values can only recede once such needs are adequately satisfied. Although, well over half of the respondents report they would like to become famous in their professional life, it is

164

M. Ule

noticeable that relatively few seek social reputation or leadership - and presumably only a minority see themselves anyway to have the opportunity to become famous in the arts and entertainment world. At the same time, entertainment as such is important to them. Interestingly, given the resurgence of nationalism, only a quarter report national identity to be important to them; but the fact that virtually none attach importance to participating in politics might be viewed with some concern. On the whole, the data infer that Slovenian youth has not yet overcome the psychological barrier of uncertainty and risk associated with major contemporary transitions. The emphasis is rather on interrelations: peace and security in the environment, both in general and in specific senses, stability, standards of living, and respect for tradition. Less emphasis is placed, however, on those values and interests which reflect creativity, originality, and fantasy. This stands in some contrast to patterns in western Europe. A good indication of the direction of social change is to be found in the significant measure of ambition in this population, as noted above in the importance placed upon career success. Table 4 (below) suggests that young people's everyday worlds are well-structured, with the central positions of trust occupied by the closest family members (parents and siblings) and their most intimate friends. Table 4: Whom do you trust the most?

(in %)

completely

parents brothers, sisters friends

49.6 32.0 29.7

God Slovenian military

17.2 10.4

priest, church

7.5

schoolfriends

7.3

political leaders teachers television

7.0 2.8 2.8 1.0

political parties

Friends, however, do not automatically mean schoolfriends, who enjoy little trust from their classmates. In this context, the lack of trust accorded to schoolteachers is of note, as is that accorded to television and, worst of all, political parties. The legacies of state socialism are much in evidence here. The renewed discovery of confidence among tight family members means, above all, that

—young people experience the family as a refuge from the problems of the outer world; the outer world has become more one-dimensional, demanding, andjeopardising for young people; - the institutionalisedpeer-group which, since the 1950s, played a very important part in the socialisation of whole generations under state socialism has lost its defining power.

165

Growing Up and Social Change in Slovenia

The young people surveyed in 1993 can no longer turn to the great heroic themes of the former Yugoslavia for inspiration and orientation. These are worn-out; but at the same time, today's young people have no other political memory or experience which extends beyond portraits of Tito up above the classroom blackboard. As they acceded to awareness of political and social realities, the ideological motifs available were suddenly truncated to a few images: national independence, settling accounts with the past, political victimisation and violent conflict - war - between people who had only yesterday, it seemed, been friends. During the 1980s, a number of issues had become identified with resistance to authoritarian and unidirectional ideologies under state socialism. These included support for the abolition of capital punishment, the right to free speech, and the demilitarisation of Slovenia. With the transformation processes set in motion at the end of the decade, opposite values to those that had been held to constitute resistance before. In the 1993 survey, then, 36% of respondents did not favour the abolition of capital punishment, 47% agreed with the statement that "it would be much better for me if there were only Slovenians in Slovenia", and 57% now took the view that "real men do not avoid military service." These views are accompanied by an 'allergic' response to the rapid withdrawal of former if authoritarianly - imposed security. A generalised, intense and inarticulate opposition to all that is 'strange' or 'different' suffuses young people's responses, as illustrated by the data in Table 5 (below). Table 5:1 would find it unproblematic to have the following kind of relationships with ... relationship (in %)

professional

personal

intimate

none

Hungarians Italians Germans

26.2 21.5 24.8

26.9 33.5 35.5

17.1 30.4 27.5

30.0 14.6

Croatians

20.7

27.4

16.0

35.9

Serbians Bosnians

14.7 22.0

7.6 9.5

Jews

15.3 19.6 21.8

27.6

13.7

48.8 36.9

Muslims HTV-positives Mentally ill

21.0 18.0 19.7

24.4 23.5 30.2

9.9 2.4

44.7 56.1

Physically disabled

22.6 19.0

39.4 23.7

5.2 6.1

44.9 32.0

16.9

14.9

6.2 2.1

51.0 66.1

Refugees Homosexuals

12.3 62.5

Firstly, the levels of intolerance based simply on nationality or ethnic group membership are very high indeed. Of the groups listed, Croatians, Bosnians and above all Serbians are the least acceptable at all relationship levels - with the exception of intimate relationships with Jewish people, who are less acceptable than Croatians. Italians, the Slovenians' nearest western neighbours (who are represented with a small minority in northern

166

M. Ule

Slovenia), are the most acceptable group - but even here, no more than a third of the respondents would have no trouble with the idea of an Italian friend. Germans enjoy virtually similar levels of acceptability - but less so in intimate relationships in contrast to professional or personal relationships. Of all the national groups listed, only Italians and Germans are utterly rejected by a relatively small proportion of respondents. Whilst the rejection of Serbians in particular is explicable by reference to the current political situation, the fact that more than a third of respondents utterly reject Jewish people and almost a third reject Hungarians is especially disturbing. Still higher on the rejection scale come Bosnians and Muslims, which, equally disturbing, points to a mixture of political, ethnic and religious intolerance towards these groups. Secondly, however, the levels of intolerance and rejection expressed towards socially stigmatised and marginalised groups are even higher. The mentally ill and the physically disabled are rejected in professional and personal life at levels similar to those for the national and ethnic groups discussed immediately above. HIV-positives, refugees and homosexuals fall well below this threshold. As far as intimate relationships are concerned, none of these groups are acceptable. HIV-positives, refugees and homosexuals are utterly rejected in each case by over half of respondents; in the case of homosexuals, no fewer than two thirds of the young Slovenians studied want nothing at all to do with them. Before we conclude, however, that young Slovenians are particularly intolerant, it is worth recalling that we do not know what young people elsewhere in Europe - east or west - would respond were they to be asked the same question. This does not detract from the concerns raised by the findings of this survey, but it does not mean we should assume Slovenia to be 'worse' than other societies in this respect. Nevertheless, our findings confirm that - the intensity of attachment to nation is undisputedly growing; - the more adolescents identify positively with their nation, the less open and tolerant they are to other nations and cultures; - national identity and the consequences that follow are the leading themes of political discussions and political consciousness of the younger generation; - attachment to nation does not depend on gender or social origin but it is related very much with support for authoritanianism (positive evaluation of obedience, use of power, etc.), traditionalism, and religiosity.

Slovenian youth cultures The everyday world of young people during the last few decades constitutes a panoply of resistance, fascination, and resignation: resistance to modern mass culture, to institutions which enforce the predominant ideology, fascination with the features or deeds of idols, subcultural styles and resignation, apathy and distance as a result of the perceived powerlessness and insignificance of young people in the presence of adults. These are in some respects conflicting tendencies and they are observable in all walks of life amongst

Growing Up and Social Change in Slovenia

167

young people, but especially in various forms of youth cultures. Which aspect of life dominates - resistance and protest, fascination or resignation, apathy, and retreat into one's own private world - will vary, of course, but all can be found. The Youth 93 survey findings suggest that resignation, apathy, and retreat into one's own private world are the most characteristic responses of young Slovenians today. On the whole, they are indifferent to subcultural styles; passive forms of leisure prevail, and needs for fantasy, originality and an attractive life are pretty much absent. However, in a cluster analysis we were able to explore what we have termed young people's 'stylistic-scene environments', made up of values (24 variables), leisure pursuits and peer-group activities (23 variables) and socio-economic status (18 variables) as collated by the survey. The cluster analysis produced a four-fold typology: accommodative, alternative, hedonistic and libertarian youth cultures.

Accommodative youth culture Young people belonging to this first group are adult-orientated, in that they spend time going out with their parents and attend church. They are interested in computers, photography or diary writing, would like to become famous sports or pop celebrities, but want to live by religious values and judge their national identity as very important to them. Their values are similar to those of their parents who approve of and encourage the activities they engage in. Not surprisingly, these young people cannot be described as belonging to a youth subculture or exhibiting lifestyles associated with such, nor do they frequent the 'scene'. In other words, they might be described as conformists in relation to the adult world: they do not cause their parents problems and they espouse traditional values.

Alternative youth culture In this second group, we find young people who exhibit 'typical' youth behaviours: they enjoy chatting with their friends about personal problems, they are searching for meaning in life, they want to have individual autonomy and freedom of thought and conduct. They are prone to want to stay young for longer, postponing 'becoming adult', and are inclined to act spontaneously, pursuing the ideas and activities that 'suit them' just at the moment. These young people are also supportive of gender equality, which suggests their sympathy for 'progressive' values.

Hedonistic youth culture This group is characterised by participation in activities oriented around pleasure, leisure and relaxation. As for their typical predispositions, they tend to prefer a laid-back workfree and carefree existence. They frequently visit rock and pop concerts, often fall in love, read horoscopes and intimate rubrics in magazines, repair motorbikes and engage in sports. They are interested in good material life-conditions, want to be in leading

168

M. Ule

positions and achieve a distinguished position in society. They are young hedonists who nevertheless have quite unproblematic ideas about their passage into adulthood. Libertarian youth culture These young people reject traditional and authoritarian claims altogether, such as for example "Major work in the household naturally suits women", "Youth needs rigid discipline, strong will ...", "Homosexuals are no better than criminals." They reject capital punishment, agree with the claim that "Pressure over immigrants and refugees is exerted by primitive people", and reject the claim that "Only Slovenians ought to live in Slovenia." Most of these young people come from urban areas and have well-educated parents. Characteristic for this group is a set of well-elaborated libertarian valueorientations. They are similar to 'alternative youth', for example in their common commitment to the values of modern civil society but libertarian youth emphasises more general values of democratic societies such as human rights, openness to 'otherness', whereas the 'alternatives' emphasise modern youth-culture values and alternative social movements.

Coping with transformation and transition Slovenian youth finds itself in an ambivalent position. Of itself, this is not so much different from the situations in which young people elsewhere in Europe - including western Europe - find themselves. Individualisation trends, the prolongation of youth as a phase of life, extended educational participation - all these can be detected in Slovenia, too. Specifically, however, the situation of Slovenian youth approximates to the attributes of selective modernisation processes in eastern European societies as delineated by Zinnecker (1991a). Most particularly, they find themselves selected between and out but not integrated into the social formation. This selectivity - a new experience in its present form - produces feelings of jeopardy, insecurity and indecision. These feelings, in turn, prompt the resurgement of return to the comforting circle of the family and established, trusted interpersonal relationships, to the known and familiar. In some ways, we might characterise this development as the re-infantilisation of young people. At the same time, economic crisis, previously unknown competitive pressures and uncertainty regarding one's personal future all contribute to a sense of jeopardy that young people see as threatening the central areas of their lives. Because of the reduction of disposable material goods and rising living expenses, young people are less present as consumers and they can devote less attention to specific forms of youth entertainment and 'stylistic scenes'. The internal variety and the overall richness of the youth scene in Slovenia has consequently diminished, and with it the socio-cultural and political influence of that scene has also decreased. This is especially visible in comparison with the 1980s, when

Growing Up and Social Change in Slovenia

169

youth movements were an important support in the fight for political pluralism and democracy in Slovenia. The most important factor of socio-political homogenisation amongst Slovenian youth is national identity. Interrelations between traditionalism, authoritarianism, ethnocentricism on the one hand, and of libertarianism, anti-authoritarianism and ethnic openness on the other hand might have been expected. These linkages are, in sociological terms, not new. Yet their significance in distinguishing between youth cultural types in Slovenia is surprisingly high. In other words, they signal more than mere differences in young people's social origin, their regional (rural - urban) origin, and so forth. Traditionalism and authoritarianism are known to occur as defensive reactions to the challenges posed by social change. We therefore assume that these ideologicalbehavioural phenomena may well be transitional in function rather than a sign of longterm personal characteristics. A comparison between the results of the 1985 and 1993 surveys shows that young Slovenians have reacted noticeably to the intervening changes. In particular, the comparison indicates a de-politisation, with the secondary effect of producing a reduction of social interests down to a one-dimensional national identity which cannot position itself at a distance to itself, and with great distance to other nations, their experiences and ways of living. As far as individualised youth characteristic of western European societies is concerned, young Slovenians are standing on the brink with respect to their preferences, sensibilities and social relationships. Rather than plunging headlong into individualism, they rather decide for passivity. That means that a great part of their energy and desires are locked into an imaginary world that they push away because it is frightening. Unexploited energy can result in an increased prosperity for violent behaviour, however, expressed in aggression towards those weaker than or different from oneself. The real danger of right-wing radicalism (left-wing radicalism has nearly disappeared) which terrifies Europe today is that it does not necessarily have any special ideological or political motivation. It must only define objects for aggression. In this sense, Slovenian youth is not more or less predisposed to right-wing violence than young people elsewhere in Europe.

Conclusion Placing these issues in their broader context, we might conclude that they are part of the processes of the transformation of intergenerational relations as a whole in modern societies. Whereas formerly, young people transferred conflicts onto their relationships with parents and significant others, they are now more likely to transfer them onto representatives of large-scale institutions, such as police officers and politicians. In consequence, they find more confidence and stability in their families and private worlds: if one likes, a sort of domestication of youth which is characterised both by withdrawal into the private sphere and by banning conflicts beyond domestic boundaries. In using the

170

M. Ule

term 'domestic', we refer not simply to home and family but also a domestic conception of society that is anchored in the triad nation-home-religion. The trend towards domestication indicates that young people experience the world as a menace to be avoided rather than as a challenge to be met. The economic crisis in Slovenia and the unemployment it entails succeeds only in pushing young people further along the road to domestication and re-infantilisation. Domes-tication per se is not necessarily regressive, but it can become so in conjunction with other factors such as economic pressures and low social and educational status. The survey data analysis indicates that members of alternative and libertarian youth cultures in Slovenia are highly under-domesticated in the sense described above. In other words, it is by no means an inevitable attribute or consequence of Slovenian life and values. We are left, then, with the following question: what contributes to the cultural capital acquired and shared by young people who belong to these and similar kinds of youth cultural groups, and how can we foster their more widespread acquisition in Slovenia and elsewhere? Note 1 The Youth 93 survey was funded by the Slovenian Ministry of Education and Office for Youth and conducted at the University of Ljubljana's Centre for Social Psychology. 56% of the respondents were male; average respondent age was 18. 83% of all respondents lived with both parents and 66% of families were owner-occupiers. Almost all of those living at home had their own room; four fifths of family homes had telephones and 72% received satellite or cable TV. About a fifth of parents (fathers slightly more so than mothers) were college or university educated, but whereas a further three fifths of fathers had at least secondary level qualifications, this was the case for only 15% of the mothers. At the time of the survey, 80% of fathers and 74% of mothers were gainfully employed.

Difference and Differentiation: Young Londoners' Accounts of 'Race' and Nation Ann Phoenix

Introduction Children and youth who live within the European Union (EU) share some commonalities of experience (see Qvortnip, this volume). However, there are also important differences between them which mean that tracing the life trajectories of children and youth requires a consideration of both fractures and cleavages. For example, plurality is evident in the fact that there is no clear, unitary endpoint to either childhood or youth (see Galland, this volume), but rather, different transitions for different children and youth. The lack of clarity around this issue in itself leads to inequalities. Part of the stigma that attaches to mothers under twenty years of age in Britain, for example, relates to the fact that many people are not certain whether they should be treated as children or as adults. The phrase 'children having children' reflects this (Phoenix 1991). Axes of differentiation include 'race', gender and social class; all of which intersect so that while there are commonalities across them, there are also specificities associated with being in a particular position. For example, in a longitudinal study of black and of white children in London from the start of nursery school to the end of infant school, Tizard et al. (1988) found no differences in attainment at age four. However, by the end of infant school, 'race'/gender differences had opened up in both progress and attainment. There were 'race'/social class differences between the children's mothers in that black mothers in the same occupational classes as their white counterparts were generally better qualified. This chapter uses data from a study of 14- to 18-year-old Londoners to consider how 'race' divides the experiences and hence the identities of young people living in London. It pays particular attention to their national identities and their orientation to the Europe in which they live and to which they belong. The young people that we interviewed are not at the margins of the European Union. Almost all were British born and all had British nationality. Studying them thus gives a picture of the ways in which 'race', gender and social class intersects in the construction of young people's national identities. The findings from the study show a shifting pattern of similarities and differences between 'race'/gender groups. Young people's constructions of their national identities were racialised. The young people's national identities were such that black people, born in Britain and possessing British passports, were often

174

A. Phoenix

constructed as Others and outsiders in the British nation. This is even while the vast majority of the young people themselves eschewed racism and racialised exclusions in favour of an egalitarian ideology. White, middle class young people were more likely than other young people to consider that Europe is both an attractive place in which to live and open to them. Perhaps not surprisingly, however, (given the British government's preoccupation with subsidiarity and not becoming too enmeshed in Europe) the young people interviewed were more likely to consider living in the USA than in the rest of Europe. This was particularly the case for black young people, many of whom felt marginal to English identity, although most claimed Britishness. This is perhaps another indication that Britain is 'in but not o f ' Europe. The chapter illustrates how subjectivities/social identities are inextricably linked to the experiences the young people have as a result of their 'race'/ethnicity. This was true for white and mixed-parentage (those with one black and one white parent) as well as for black young people.

The relevance of a London based study to European understandings Focusing on the intersection of'race' and national identities for young Londoners runs the risk of producing what Lynne Chisholm (this volume) has called a 'museum study' since Britain is generally seen in Europe as not only having a uniquely British colour problem, but being obsessed with it. It is true that Britain has a relatively long history of having (however reluctantly) to face the legal and social implications of being a plural society. However, Britain is not as different from the rest of Europe as is often thought. While there are some differences in the ways in which 'race', gender and social class as differentiating factors are expressed in the different countries of Europe, they are equally important in each. As van Dijk (1993a, 63) argues "Perhaps with the exception of Ireland, whose poverty has not attracted many immigrants, virtually all European countries and their politicians are part of the problem of European racism". Britain is not the only European country to have a black population; the Surinamese Dutch population of the Netherlands shares some of the experiences of the African-Caribbean British population (Essed 1991). In Germany, contrary to popular belief, it is not only Turks who are constructed as Other. Afro-Germans also report experiences of discrimination and nonacceptance within German society (Opitz 1992). Britain, Germany and France have all witnessed an increase in the number of racial attacks against minorities. Indeed, although it is Germany which is most often demonised for racist attacks, there are now more attacks in Greater London than in the whole of Germany (van Dijk 1993b). There have also been increases in support for right-wing parties in many European countries. In Britain the election of the first ever British National Party (BNP) councillor demonstrates the ease with which it is possible to interpolate 'race' into social concerns for ordinary white, working class people in Britain

Young Londoners' Accounts of'Race' and Nation

175

as in France and Germany (albeit on a smaller scale). The fact that the term of office of Britain's only BNP councillor so far was short lived (from September 1993 to May 1994) demonstrates another shared European feature: a tradition of opposition to racism from some members of majority as well as minority ethnic groups.

'Race', nation and the European Union Issues of 'race', ethnicity, religion and nationalism have forced themselves onto the European stage in new ways in the last decade as issues of 'race' and ethnicity have become increasingly important and problematic within Europe and the European Union. The beginning of 1993 (when the main elements of the European Union are completed) marked a turning point, at least in theory, for nations and states within the newly created European Union. Freedom of movement within the community and of trade between community members made national boundaries within Europe less important and more permeable than they had been. At the same time it fortified those boundaries between Europe and the rest of the world tighter against those constructed as 'outsiders' who have come to be seen as an 'alien flood' in many EU countries. Questions of who is excluded and who included as nationals of the new European Union have, so far, served to solidify existing centre-periphery relations (Brah 1993). This has consequences for those constructed as 'outsiders', particularly since those rendered marginal are generally excluded on the basis of characteristics (such as colour or country of parents' or grandparents' origin) which take no account of nationality or connection with a country. It justifies second class citizenship for thousands of minority peoples. The tightening of German asylum laws in early 1994 and the granting of powers of stop and search of people suspected of being illegal immigrants to French police are examples of restrictions that have implications for many of the 15 million people from minority ethnic groups who live in EU countries (about five per cent of the EU population). In addition, the number of deportations from Britain have doubled over the last five years (The London Programme 1993; Runnymede Trust 1994). The differential consequences of'Fortress Europe' for minorities and for majorities also potentially has an impact on the ways in which national identities are constructed and reconstructed in individual countries, even though there is no clear collective European identity or even a universal desire for one (witness the British Secretary of State for social services, Peter Lilley's, public insults of Europeans in October 1993). Within Europe, Philip Schlesinger (1991) suggests that European Commission publications on national and cultural identity within the EU have attempted to create collective identities by stressing that there is 'unity in diversity' and to create an 'imagined community'. Since Britain, and most of Europe are plural societies, it is possible, at least theoretically, for people to have hyphenated identities (as in the USA) such as Asian British or black British. There is also the possibility of a dynamic and negotiated

176

A. Phoenix

consensus to reconcile the demands of uniformity (a unitary British identity) and of plurality. Giddens (1991) argues that the uncertainties that characterise late modernity can give rise to 'ontological insecurity', and hence a rise in nationalism. Nationalism and racism are interlinked. Bauman (1992) puts this thus "Nationalism, one may say, is a racism of the intellectuals and obversely, racism is the nationalism of the masses"(p. 686). It is perhaps not surprising, then, that British national identity has assumed racist overtones because it has come to be associated with 'race' and ethnicity (Hall 1992; Gilroy 1992). We increasingly face a racism which avoids being recognized as such because it is able to link 'race' with nationhood, patriotism and nationalism, a racism which has taken a necessary distance from crude ideas of biological inferiority and superiority, and now seeks to present an imaginary definition of the nation as a unified cultural community. It constructs and defends an image of national culture - homogeneous in its whiteness yet precarious and perpetually vulnerable to attack from enemies within and without. (Gilroy 1992, 53). ... ethnicity, in the form of a culturally constructed sense of Englishness and a particularly closed, exclusive and regressive form of English national identity, is one of the core characteristics of British racism today. (Hall 1992, 256).

In this, Britain is not alone, racism, ethnicism and nationalism are all interlinked throughout Europe (Tubingen Reader 1993). New racisms that play down notions of superiority/inferiority still include these links between 'race' and nation (Brah 1993). Anthony Smith (1984) contrasts the primordial view of ethnicity and nationality that Gilroy and Hall describe, as natural and inherited through descent, with the instrumental view of ethno-nationalism as being about boundary maintenance, but flexible so that ethnic identities and group boundaries may be defended, permeated or ignored, depending on the context. That is, they are malleable and dynamic. According to Smith, the primordial view of ethnicity depends on the operation of myths which serve to produce the 'imagined community' (Anderson 1983) of a unitary nation-state. In practice, Smith suggests that both elements, the culturally immutable primordial and the dynamic instrumental, may be at play in the construction of ethno-nationalism. The ways in which people construct their 'imagined communities' are important because they have an impact on how they position themselves in relation to other people and where they place the boundaries between national groups. Discursive constructions of national identities are not divorced from 'reality' but instead have wider consequences. What the person in the street does has implications for what their political leaders do since political constructions of popular racism push mainstream politics to the right, and in turn, provide space for more right-wing activity in Europe (Shields 1992). Since (following Erikson 1968) adolescence is viewed by many as a period where identity development comes into focus, and since young people are the citizens of the future, a number of questions arise about the national identities that young British people currently have. For example, do young people have strong national identities? If so, are they primordial national identities which exclude people constructed as 'Other' or are they more instrumental? How does colour differentiate young people's discourses on

Young Londoners' Accounts of 'Race' and Nation

177

nationality? Are their national identities also differentiated by gender and/or social class? It is perhaps particularly illuminating to consider young people's national identities since they are often considered to be somehow less racist than their parents' generation and, in addition, have had more opportunities to mix in large British cities with a variety of ethnic groups.

Young people's constructions of'race' and nation The 'Social Identities in Adolescence' study interviewed 248, 14- to 18-year-old black, white and mixed-parentage young Londoners. The young people were middle class and working class. They were interviewed about a range of their identities, including gender, social class, 'race', ethnicity as well as national identities. We also interviewed some of their parents (Tizard and Phoenix 1993; Phoenix and Tizard, in prep.). Feeling British or English by colour One of the striking things about the data from the Social Identities study was that the majority of young people maintained an egalitarian ideology to do with 'race', social class and gender which was particularly marked for those of mixed-parentage. Yet, there were differences in their constructions of'race', ethnicity and nationality. We asked the young people whether they thought of themselves as being English, British or neither. This is a distinction that may seem incomprehensible to non-British Europeans (although it is perhaps more easily understood by Germans since the reunification of Germany). It is both a geographical and an ideological distinction with England being the dominant nation in the British nation-state (which includes Scotland, Wales and England; Northern Ireland being part of the United Kingdom). As a geographical location it produces the possibility of contradictory identities because, while it is the dominant nation, both majority and minority British people are born and grow up in England. White and mixed parentage young people were more likely than were black young people to define themselves as English. Nearly half of both the white and the mixed parentage young people said this, while only just over a quarter of the black young people did. Black young people were as likely to say that they were British as that they were English whereas the mixed parentage and white young people were less likely to say that they only define themselves as British than that they only define themselves as English. Racialised identities intersected with national identities so that some young people (from all colour groups) saw Englishness (and sometimes Britishness) as synonymous with whiteness. In Anthony Smith's (1984) terms, they had a 'primordial' view of ethnicity, perceiving the symbolic boundaries of 'Englishness' to be predicated on colour and descent.

178

A. Phoenix

"English is if you are white and you are born and raised here and everything. If you are British now your parents can be of a different colour ..." (black young woman)

There was a slight gender difference here in that young women were slightly more likely than young men to say that they considered themselves to be English (44%, N=63 vs. 34%, N=33). It seems that many young black people were actively 'vacating' a claim on Englishness because they considered that their colour caused them to be excluded from the category 'English'. Therefore, they did not want to make Englishness their main national allegiance. Q.

Do you think of yourself as English or British, or neither?

A.

Well, I guess now I think I'm British because I was signing up like - not signing up for a Saturday job and I wrote, I think I wrote English and then the lady crossed it out and wrote British, (black young woman)

A.

British, because I live in Great Britain and have a British passport. I am not English. I am not Celt and I don't have brown hair.

Q.

So how would brown hair make a difference to you?

A.

Brown-haired, brown-eyed, blue-eyed people are English. That is you know, those are English people, descended from the Angles you know. I am a British person because Jamaica was a British subject, (black young woman)

A.

English is like if you are white and you are born and raised here and everything. If you are British, now, your parents can be of a different colour. ... (black young woman)

The discourses that the young people produced thus fit with Hall's (1992) and Gilroy's (1992) contention that the symbolic boundaries of 'Englishness' are perceived, in Smith's primordial terms, to be predicated on colour and descent. Some white young people who had been born in England also 'vacated' Englishness for reasons akin to those given by young black people. Their parents or grandparents had been born in another country (usually Ireland or Scotland) and hence they had access to affiliations that most of the white young people did not and, in addition, felt that they could not claim Englishness for this reason. Q.

Do you think of yourself as English or British or neither?

A.

Well, I'm not English because my grand dad is part German and my nan's part Irish I think, so I've got German, Irish and Scottish,... so I mean I'm a bit of a mixture, so I don't know. British, I suppose, even though I've lived in England all my life, (white young woman)

A.

I class myself as English, but if anybody asks what I am, I always say I am Irish for some reason. Always do. (white young woman)

In a study of young people's Irish ethnicity, Philip Ullah found that those young people who reported that they considered themselves to be Irish or partly Irish were those who retained other aspects of Irish identity (Ullah 1985; 1990). While many of the black young people's accounts indicated that they could not be fully English because they are black, those of their parents whom we interviewed perceived

Young Londoners' Accounts of'Race' and Nation

179

their children to be different from them in being English born and brought up. If some black young people's accounts are followed to their logical conclusion, then the young people's children will also not be English because they will not be born to white and/or English parents. For many of the young people, the issue of colour was too intertwined with the question of nationality for place of birth to override it. A handful of the young people (of all colours) said that they refused to think of themselves as being of any nationality (6% of the whole sample) and simply said that people should not place importance on national categories. Their refusal to do so is itself interesting. They saw nationalism as potentially causing strife. In order to gain some insight into the young people's reasons for either affiliating themselves with or 'vacating' Englishness or Britishness, we asked them what they considered to be the differences between being English and being British; who they considered to be English and whether they considered that English people are white. The question of whether English people are white (and hence that blackness necessarily precluded Englishness) was specifically prompted if necessary with the question "Do you think that English people are white?" This was partly to overcome the possibility that young people (particularly white young people for fear of being thought racist) may have been reticent to mention colour when asked about nationality. Although most of the young people had categorised themselves as English, British or both, nearly a quarter of the whole sample (22%, N=51) maintained that there were no differences between being English and being British since, if you are English, you are also British. In some cases, England was assumed to be Britain. "Is there a distinction between the two?" (white young woman)

The young people were more likely to give strictly factual answers in terms of geographical differences between England and Britain. Thus nearly half of the total sample (45%, N=103) said that they considered that the difference was that Scotland and Wales are in Britain, but not in England. Again, however, there were colour differences in this in that young black people were the group least likely to give geographical differences as the difference between being English or being British. This may be because most of them were born in England, but relatively few considered that they were English. Being born in England had thus not made much difference to most of their reported perceptions of their nationality. Young black people were more likely than the other young people interviewed to mention colour and birth in England (either for parents or for self) as things that differentiate the English and the British. 45% of black young people, 9% of white young people gave these reasons. Young people of mixed parentage fell in between those who were white and those who were black (at 29%). When asked who they considered to be English, the young people gave slightly different answers to those they gave when asked what they thought were the differences between being English and being British. The two most frequently occurring responses were 'white' people (50% of the overall sample) and 'people born in Britain' (40% vs. 9% who said their parents were born in Britain).

180

A. Phoenix

Young women were more likely than young men to say that residence was a sufficient condition for someone to claim Englishness. A fifth of them said this (21%, N=29 vs. 13%, N=12). They were also slightly less likely to say that Englishness necessitated whiteness. The answers which indicated that social class differentiated people who could be classified as English, were given by a tiny minority of young people (4%, N=9). Such answers indicated that English people are more middle class or upper class than other British people. Occasionally, an answer indicated that class and 'race' are interlinked. "You count British like from Ireland, Northern Ireland and Wales and Scotland as well, whereas the English you think of someone like prim and proper English person, more upper class you would say." (white young woman) Q.

And what sort of people would you think of as being English?

A.

The posh ones.

Q.

Right, who...?

A

The whites.

A.

People who are really snobby and stuck up. (mixed-parentage young woman)

A.

Posh people, (black young woman)

Resistance to felt exclusion Young people who eschewed Englishness did not necessarily decry the country in which they are born and reared. Rather, they felt unable to lay claim to Britain as belonging to them. Q.

Do you feel that Britain is your country?

A.

No. I live in this country ... I can't really cuss the country I live in, cos I live in it, but I don't - I'm not English though, (black young man)

Although two thirds of the black young people said that they thought that English people were white, they did not homogeneously accept that Englishness and whiteness necessarily intersected. Some resisted notions that Englishness necessarily entailed whiteness. They acknowledged that many people see Englishness in terms which exclude black people, but they themselves resisted such notions. As such, they managed the contradictions of claiming a nationality they felt that they were excluded from by the majority of those within that nationality. The first person quoted below rejected the primordial notion of the purity of an English 'race' constituted through descent, whereas the second said that he rejected other people's constructions of Englishness as whiteness. A.

I'd say a lot of people think of English as being white, but I don't think of English as being white.

Q.

What do you think of English as being?

Young Londoners' Accounts of'Race' and Nation A.

181

Multi-cultural, I suppose. There's no such thing as pure, pure British or pure English because if you trace it back to their ancestors there's no way they're pure, (black young man)

Q.

Do you think of yourself as English or British or neither?

A.

Well, probably more British than English.

Q.

Is there any reason for that?

A.

Probably because other people think that English means white, whereas British can mean more than that.

Q.

Do you think that English is white?

A.

No. (black young man)

A further way for black young people to resist other people's definitions of the inclusions and exclusions to do with Englishness or Britishness was simply to refuse to place themselves into national categories. Q.

Do you think of yourself as English or British, or neither?

A.

I usually say I am black, (black young man)

Problems for white young people Being asked about national identities was not necessarily easier for white than for black young people. There sometimes seemed to be some embarrassment for white young people about appearing too avidly English in case this appeared 'racist' or jingoistic. The following example illustrates Billig et al. (1988) 'dilemmatic' notion of ideology, particularly as expressed to an older interviewer. The dilemma is to do with expressing their views while not appearing racist. Q.

... And what sort of people do you think of as being English?

A.

Um. (pause)

Q.

... Do you think of English people as being white?

A.

Yes, probably, yes, I do ... I know I shouldn't but I probably do.

Q.

Why do you think you shouldn't?

A.

Because I think that's probably racist.

Q.

Why...?

A.

Um, because I think it's discriminating. It's saying that people who are not white are not like fully a part of this country ... which is wrong. It's kind of a subconscious thing ... like the stereotyped Englishman, (white young man)

The fact that the equation of 'race', nation and culture poses dilemmas for some of the young white people leads them to use rhetorical devices which are "two-sided", in which

182

A. Phoenix

"two contrary themes are expressed simultaneously ..." (Billig et al. 1988,109). In the above instance, the young man indicates that he recognises that it is racist and exclusionary to equate Englishness and whiteness. He thus expresses reluctance to espouse the idea and indeed, does not do so until expressly asked. The term British was also occasionally considered to be imbued with a sense of national pride. "British seems to have some sense of nostalgia about it you know - sort of British pride and things. But er - English is more factual, the country you come from." (white girl)

Discomfort on the part of white young people could be warded off by viewing ethnicity and nationality as optional and voluntary rather than as related to subject positions. From this perspective young black people are perceived as having more choice than young white people about opting into or out of Englishness. As such ethnic and national differences could be a focus of resentment in a similar way to that described in the Burnage report (Macdonald et al. 1989). "They can call themselves English, but some of them choose to call themselves West Indian. They can still do that." (white young man)

Patriotism White young people's dilemma about appearing nationalist was particularly evident when it came to talking about allegiance to the Union Jack. We asked a series of questions about whether or not the young people felt patriotic to any country. It is striking that this sample really do not consider themselves to be patriotic on the whole. Overall sixty-nine per cent reported that they were either not patriotic or were not sure if they were. This may have been because many were not really familiar with the concept, did not recognise the word 'patriotic' and had to ask for clarification. However, colour differences were apparent in their answers. White young people were the most likely to say that they were patriotic to Britain and only to Britain. Nonetheless, it is a minority of white young people who can be mobilised to nationalistic activity on the basis of their patriotism. Giddens' (1991) notion that nationalism arises at a time of ontological insecurity is notable here. For middle class young people were more likely than working class young people to give discursive constructions which suggested that they felt patriotic. They also expressed more insecurity about issues of social class and what they should think about 'race' than their working class counterparts. Colour differences were also apparent when young people were asked about their feelings about the Union Jack. The figures for positive feelings about the Union Jack were 23% (16) for whites, 3% (2) for black young people and 11% (5) for mixedparentage young people. More than a quarter (27%, N=20) of the young white people were unequivocally positive about the royal family, while only 5% (3) black young people and 17% (8) of the mixed parentage young people were. This was the only finding related to patriotism where there were slight gender differences in that young women were

Young Londoners' Accounts of'Race' and Nation

183

slightly more likely to be positive about the royal family than were young men (19%, N=21 vs. 13%, N=10). They were also, however, more likely to express negative feelings about the royal family (36%, N=39 vs. 27%, N=21) and less likely to express indifference to it (28%, N=30 vs. 44%, N=34). This is perhaps not surprising given that much attention focused on the royal family is about the appearance and dress of its (now marginal) younger women members. The following quotes illustrate how difficult it is for some young white people to pledge allegiance to the Union Jack without having to explain themselves. The first young white man, who considers himself patriotic, seems unable to bring himself to say anything about the Union Jack to the interviewer (although it is possible that he really had no feelings about the Union Jack). Q.

Would you call yourself patriotic or not really?

A.

Yes, patriotic.

Q.

How do you feel about the royal family?

A.

I love them.

Q.

Can I ask what you mean when you say you are patriotic?

A.

Well I love my country. I am right behind them, whatever.

Q.

How do you feel about the Union Jack?

A.

How do I feel? (pause) Nothing.

Q.

Do you feel loyal to Britain?

A.

Yes. (white young man Q)

The second quote is from a young white woman who clearly experiences dilemmas in expressing allegiance to the Union Jack. She thus uses the discursive device of qualifying what she has to say so that while her allegiance to the Union Jack is not diluted, she claims it as a non-racist, non-exclusionary national symbol. Q.

Would you call yourself patriotic or not really?

A.

Yes, I am.

Q.

What do you mean by that?

A.

... There are things like sort of cricket and the proms and traditional Christmases and things that are special that I don't really think you get anywhere else in a particular way. They are really just a British thing...

Q.

How do you feel about the royal family?

A.

I am pro-royalist.

Q.

And the Union Jack?

A.

Yes, but I think not to use it to the extent that it should be used to guard off everybody else.

Q.

Do you feel loyal to Britain?

A.

Yes. (white young woman)

184

A. Phoenix

To some extent English and British national pride have come to be seen by many people as the prerogative of the National Front and other nationalist groups and, for some, the Union Jack is the ultimate symbol of this. It is partly for this reason that the young people we interviewed were not, on the whole, very enthusiastic about the Union Jack. Only 13% of the young people that we interviewed were positive about the Union Jack. Most of those who expressed positive feelings were white, with black young people being most likely to express negative feelings about it. The following quotes were all from black young women. Q.

How about the Union Jack? How do you feel about the Union Jack?

A.

Ah, there is a song about that: There ain't no black in the Union Jack so send the niggers back. We learnt that in sociology, (black young woman)

Q.

So, how do you feel about it?

A.

The Union Jack?... I don't know what to feel about it. It's only blue white and red. I don't know about the Union Jack because I don't actually look at it as a big thing, the flag. I just think of it as England and that's it. (black young woman)

Q.

And how about the Union Jack?

A.

Um, sometimes I think that it's no worse than having the, um, flag for America. But, um, the thing that always worries me about patriotism is that it's, er, a mild form of racism, it's like we're better than anyone else. Especially with England, you know. Rule Britannia ... Britannia rules the waves ... so that's one of the reasons why I don't really describe myself as patriotic. And also the Union Jack reminds me, makes me think of skinheads, (black young woman)

A.

Nowadays I am opposed to it because a lot of kids who use it, they tend not only to be patriotic but they really go to extremes, 'There'll always be an England' - they usually sing that song. More to the National Front, (black young woman)

Similarly negative feelings to those expressed about the Union Jack by the above black young people were sometimes expressed by white young people as ambivalence about being British. This was because of the contradictions perceived in being part of a colonial power that had often not behaved well, but which was still attractively powerful. Q.

Do you feel that Britain is your country?

A.

Unfortunately it does belong, but I don't think I'm actually very proud to be British or English whatever, I suppose, yes. I am proud to be British in that it's a very important country ... It's a universal language, English, so, yes, I'm proud sometimes. But then I think the English have caused so many problems around the world that I wish I wasn't sometimes, (white young woman)

That expressed ambivalence should not be overstated, since 69% (59) of the white young people and 58% (30) of the mixed-parentage young people said that they considered that Britain was their country. By way of comparison, only 30% (23) young black people said this. Asked whether they felt loyal to Britain 51% (44) of young white people, 31% (16) of mixed-parentage young people and only 19% (14) black people said that they were loyal to Britain. By way of contrast, 46% (25) of black young people and 33% (13) of

Young Londoners' Accounts of 'Race' and Nation

185

mixed-parentage young people said that they felt loyalty to the countries (other than Britain) that their parents came from. Not surprisingly, only 8% (6) of white people expressed such allegiances. Young women were less likely to say that they felt loyal either to Britain (29%, N=37 vs. 43%, N=37) or, where relevant, to their parents' country (18%, N=17 vs. 34%, N=27).

Other countries in which the young people wanted to live When asked whether they thought they would live in Britain for the rest of their lives, fewer than half the young people said that they would. Black young people were, perhaps not surprisingly, the least likely to say that they would definitely do so. The figures were 33% (27) black, 44% (24) mixed parentage, and 59% (55) white. Whatever their colour, young people were more likely to say that they would like to live in the USA than in other European countries. This was particularly the case for young men, but the difference was slight for young white people of both sexes (11 wanting to live in the USA and 9 in Europe). None of the young black people said that they wanted to live in European countries although 39 of them wanted to live in either the USA and/or the Caribbean. Four young people of mixed parentage said that they would like to live in Europe, compared with 12 who wanted to go to the USA. Young women were less likely to express an attraction to the USA as a home (25%, N=18 vs. 42%, N=20) and slightly more likely to be attracted to Europe (only white and mixed-parentage young people) (13%, N=9 vs. 8%, N=4). Q.

Do you see yourself living in England for the rest of your life?

A.

Um, probably, but I'd like to go and live in France for a bit... Nowhere hot because I can't stand the heat. Perhaps Australia, (white young woman)

A.

... America simply because of money, economic reasons. You know, once you've got your qualifications America ... and Canada are good places to go and use them, (black young woman)

Ranking of national identities At the end of the interview, we asked the young people to rank the identities we had asked them about throughout the interview by sorting cards into order. We were slightly sceptical initially that this procedure would produce any useful data. However, it did differentiate the sample by colour on a number of factors, including nationality. White young people were the least likely to say that nationality was important to their sense of identity. Seventy per cent of them left it out of their rankings as not important. 61% of young people of mixed-parentage also considered it not important, while only 39% of black young people did. The explanation for this may be that the racialisation of nationality makes it more important to black young people's identities than to white

186

A. Phoenix

young people's, in much the same way that colour was more important in the rankings to black young people's social identities than to white young people's. For young people of mixed parentage, having one white British parent gave them a stake in Britain and in Europe that black young people did not feel they had. Young women were even less likely to rank nationality as important than were young men. No young women ranked it as the most important area of their social identities (four young men did) and only eight young women (6%) ranked it in the first three compared with 17 young men (19%). Altogether 60% (77) of young women and 52% (47) of young men did not rank nationality as important.

Conclusions The young people that we interviewed did not have unitary views or unitary identities in relation to nationality. In Smith's (1984) terms they had both primordial and instrumental views about national identity. Primordial views were most evident in statements which showed that young people from each of the colour groups that we studied equated being English with being white. The data from the study indicate that, for many of the young people we interviewed, nationality is racialised in such a way that Englishness is symbolically predicated on notions of colour and 'racial' and cultural purity through descent. Instrumental views were most evident in the accounts of the minority of young people who said that residence or birth are sufficient to confer Englishness or Britishness. Some of the young people simultaneously used both primordial and instrumental discourses of national identity. The simultaneous commitments to 'primordial' and 'instrumental' views of nationality demonstrated by some of the young people, illustrate Billig's (1991) concept of the 'dilemmatic' nature of ideology which has its own contradictions inherent in it. For black young people there was sometimes resistance to the primordial view evident in statements such as "They say it (Englishness) is white, but I don't think so". For white young people, there was sometimes reluctant admission that they did hold a primordial view. "I know it ought not to, but I think it (Englishness) does (equal whiteness)". Some young people were aware that the primordial view of nationality was an imagined one, involving a mythic past and, as a result, rejected it. Many of the black young people interviewed asserted that they were British. However, this did not mean that they reported identities which unequivocally positioned blackness as an integral part of the British nation. Instead, being black was considered by many black, white and mixed parentage young people to signify outsider status with regard to Englishness (the dominant national identity in the British state) and an ambiguous position with regard to Britishness. It might be argued that this does not matter for two reasons. Firstly, because Britain and the United Kingdom contains many nations with the English, Welsh, Irish and Scots also being ambiguously positioned within the British nation with regard to the dominant

Young Londoners' Accounts of 'Race' and Nation

187

ethnicity of Englishness (Brah 1993). Secondly, it could also be argued that black young people are likely to be protected from the negative impact of exclusion from Englishness if they have strong identities as black people and allegiances to the countries from which their parents come. Such allegiances could, arguably, be protective against living in a racist society. However, most of the young people we interviewed were English born and hence English. Their racialised exclusion from Englishness matters because it is built on perceived rejection rather than on choice. Furthermore, their right to membership of the European Union depends on their British status, but Britishness can be more confidently asserted if there is also a claim to one of the nations within the British nation-state, rather than being only the result of post-coloniality (important though this is). There has been, in the past, some concerted resistance by black people to the notion that black people cannot be British, hence the use of the term 'Black British'. However, claims to Englishness may be more important within the European context than they were before the European Union came into existence. Young white people are also affected by these ambivalences. For a few, this was, in some ways, similar to the ambivalence expressed by black young people, in that they had parents or grandparents who came from another country. Some others, however, whom we interviewed felt that they could not claim Englishness because they perceived its symbols to have been hijacked by groups on the extreme Right. This raises the issue of whether positive features of nationalism (if one accepts that there are some) can be maintained when symbols of Englishness/Britishness are perceived to be predicated on racist assumptions. These inclusions/exclusions also had an impact on who considers Europe to be theirs. Although young people in general reported themselves to be more attracted to living in the USA than to living in other countries in Europe, a handful of white young people did consider that Europe is the place in which they will eventually choose to live. Even fewer young people of mixed parentage said that they intended to live in Europe, whereas no young black people said that they wanted to. The findings of this study then indicate that young people's national identities were differentiated by colour and, to a lesser extent, by gender. Although almost all of the young people we interviewed were British born and all attended schools where there were at least some pupils from other ethnic groups, discourses which constructed whiteness as synonymous with Englishness or Britishness were common. The study of racialised differences is, therefore, important to the study of youth. Childhood and youth in Europe can thus only be understood if account is taken of differences between young people in discourses and positioning. The complexities of the ways in which 'race'/nation, gender and social class differentiate children's and young people's lives thus need to be kept in close view.

Political-moral Attitudes amongst Young People in Post-Communist Hungary Olga Tôth

Introduction Transformation processes in central and eastern European post-communist societies have become the subject of intense sociological interest, in that they provide a unique historical opportunity to study specific change processes from state socialist planned economies to democratic market economies. These change processes do not restrict themselves to system and institutional reforms, but might reasonably be supposed to include shifts in attitudes and values under the new social and cultural circumstances. Of particular interest in this connection is the question of how young people's attitudes and values respond to the major upheavals and changes that are taking place in their lives, which focusing on Hungarian youth - is the topic of this contribution. Developments in the political-moral attitudes and values of young people in postcommunist societies are of particular interest for several reasons. Firstly, state socialism was a political system that emphasised the significance of collectivist and puritan values and morals over against individualism and hedonism. The hypocritical quality of declared system imperatives was exposed as it became clear that state socialist aims could not be achieved. In other words, the patent contradictions between ideologies and realities could hardly be overlooked. These contradictions arguably made their presence most strongly felt in Hungary, where the 'second economy' developed into a 'second society' in which capable people could always find solutions to problems apparently irresolvable by the party state. Hungarian socialism took the form of a dual system in which people formally followed declared ideological rules but equally lived a 'second life' founded on quite different values that approximated more closely to capitalist individualism than to socialist collectivism. This dual system, however, undermined social morality, in that it was founded on a whole series of illusions and deceptions. Secondly, the weakening of social morality that accompanied the dual system in Hungary resulted in rising levels of (ruthless) individualism, lack of social concern and cynicism. This situation contrasts quite markedly with that in Poland, for example, where solidarity remained a strongly affirmed value (and, as the name of the trade union, led the banner of political opposition in the 1980s). Such visible evidence of positive community was lacking in Hungary, where people developed individualised strategies of personal

190

O. Toth

betterment and generally delegated the task of working towards social and economic equality as a state, government and Party responsibility. Thirdly, transformation processes have not noticeably produced a change of direction in Hungarian social morality. The transition to a market economy has deepened rather than alleviated social inequalities. Privatisation and the new entrepreneurship together with inflation and unemployment have produced a society divided into 'winners and losers'. These developments are not viewed favourably by the population at large; there is strong criticism of the new rich and the new power elite, whose actions are evaluated as 'immoral1. High levels of dissatisfaction and frustration with the new social and economic circumstances have followed, and it is in this context that the recent electoral success of left-wing socialist parties is to be interpreted. The popular view held that the coalition government taking office after the first democratic elections in Hungary had performed badly - not only economically but also morally - and was therefore voted out. At present, then, Hungarian society is characterised by both a searching demand for greater moral integrity and widespread scepticism, disillusion and frustration about the circumstances of present-day life. Young Hungarians' views are of particular interest in that they might be considered as the 'cleanest' social group for study in a society whose members' ideas about their futures and prospects are 'naive'. As such, their values and morals are of an 'exceptional' nature, especially since young people's judgements are characteristically strongly mediated by considerations of moral principle. At the same time, we might suppose that the growing dissatisfaction and frustration occasioned by the present structural changes in economy and society will equally exert an influence upon their perspectives. It is, of course, impossible to separate out the complex factors involved in shaping political-moral attitudes and values. The first step, however, is to provide a picture of those attitudes and values themselves, and this has been the purpose of the study reported here.

The Hungarian Youth Inquiry In 1993, TARKI (Social Research Informatics Centre) conducted a survey of 5,000 14- to 18-year-olds in Hungary. Funded by the Ministry of Welfare, the survey sample was designed to be representative by age cohort distribution, sex, respondent education/work social status and region/type of settlement. This means that the sample contained almost equal proportions of young women and men; respondents were evenly distributed across the five ages between 14 and 18 years old. Some 5% of the sample were ethnic Sinti/Roma ('gypsies'). Almost one fifth of the sample lived in Budapest, half in other urban areas, and the remaining quarter in rural settlements. 10% were unemployed at the time of the survey and 11% had a job; the remainder were in full-time education and training of some kind, mostly in the secondary sector. Respondents completed an instrument containing some 250 questions, almost all of a 'closed' nature. The survey was administered personally by trained interviewers. Three 'open' questions were included

Political-moral Attitudes amongst Young People in Post-Communist Hungary

191

(attitudes towards skinheads, on parents and 'three wishes'). The survey aimed to elicit information about the social problems young people see themselves as facing; their attitudes towards paid work, unemployment and adult life in general; and their political attitudes. The response rate was 100% and the findings were analysed in the usual manner using SPSS. Detailed statistical tables are omitted for the purposes of this discussion, although they are of course available from TARKI on request.

Political-moral views In this paper, we focus on two issues: nationalist and 'racist' views, and attitudes towards violence as a means of political change. In the Hungarian context, attitudes towards the Sinti/Roma minority are the basis for evaluating the extent of 'racist' views amongst young people. The colloquial term for Sinti/Roma is, of course, 'gypsies', and it is this term that was therefore used in the wording of the attitude statements, with which respondents were asked to register their agreement/disagreement using a five-point Likert scale. Table 1 (overleaf) lists the statements used for both issues discussed here together with the averaged sample response. The averaged results mask internal differentiations among the sample, of course, and tend to regress towards the mid-point of the agreement/disagreement scale. However, we can see that both attachment to Hungarian identity and protective distancing from western power and influence are attractive to young Hungarians. The statement attracting the highest level of overall agreement is that which judges Sinti/Roma peoples to have significantly different 'habits' (presumably, in comparison with respondents' own). Whilst there is also a tendency to view Sinti/Roma peoples as unable to assimilate to the wider society, there is equally a tendency to disagree that those who do not identify with 'true Hungarianism' (howsoever defined) should be excluded or somehow 'chased away'. Young Hungarians are distinctly inclined to see their peers, however, as alienated from adult society, which neglects the pressing problems they presently face. They tend to concur that, as a result, young people are getting desperate and would not exclude political violence as a means of forcing changes. At the same time - and typically for inquiries into this topic - respondents are inclined to reject the idea of pursuing change by violent means in their own case. When the sample is looked at in more detail, noticeable differences emerge. It is hardly surprising, of course, that those respondents who were themselves of Sinti/Roma origin were very likely to disagree with the statements about 'gypsies' shown above. On the other hand, these respondents were no less 'nationalist' in their views than was the sample as a whole. Interestingly, it was girls and young women in this sample who were more likely to agree with the nationalist statements shown above, whereas boys and young men were more inclined to adopt anti-'gypsy' views. A similar opposition between nationalism and 'racism' appears when the results are differentiated by age: younger respondents adopt nationalist statements more than older respondents do, but less often adopt anti-

192

O. Tóth

'gypsy' views. Respondents' own educational positionings produce clear differences in response to these statements. Those attending grammar schools were most likely to reject both nationalism and 'racism' as applied to Sinti/Roma; those attending secondary vocational schools or who are employed were most likely to adopt anti-'gypsy' attitudes. Table 1: Attitude statements: sample averages nationalisiWracism'

sample average score

People who consider their Hungarian identity more important than anything else are attractive for me Those who stand in the way of true Hungarians must be chased away

3.68

People who are very religious are very attractive for me

2.93

We must not let the western world dominate us. Hungarians must proceed on their own way Gypsies have extremely different habits

3.71

Gypsies lack the ability to become similar to other people

2.88

2.46

3.82

political violence 3.10

It is no wonder that young people turn away from the adult world, because it promises them nothing Young people' prospects are now so hopeless that in their bitterness they would do anything If the country's leaders do not show more concern for young people's problems, young people will get what they need by violent means I, too, would be willing to take part in a violent movement if I thought it sure that it may improve my situation

2.94 2.94 2.13

Note: On the five-point scale, 1 = disagree fully, 5 = fully agree. The higher the average score, the higher the level of sample agreement with the statement Similarly, the higher the educational level of respondents' own mothers, the greater the rejection of nationalist and 'racist' attitudes (although here, respondents whose mothers had very little education displayed a wider variety of views than this unilinear correlation would immediately suggest). Finally, those young people living in urban areas were less 'nationalist and racist' in their views as expressed by their response to the statements shown above than those living in rural areas. As far as attitudes towards political violence are concerned - in which the four statements shown in Table 1 are listed in ascending order of 'radicality' - the most significant internally differentiating variables for the patterns of response proved to be those of respondent

social

status,

mother's educational

level, and

ethnic

group

membership (in this study, Hungarian vs. Sinti/Roma). These factors influenced response in similar ways for all four statements used. The higher the educational level of the respondents' mothers and the higher the prestige of the educational institution attended by respondents themselves, the lower is the level of agreement with the four statements and, in particular, the greater is the rejection of political violence. Those respondents who are unemployed, who are already wage earners, or who are attending vocational schools

Political-moral Attitudes amongst Young People in Post-Communist Hungary

193

were much readier to agree with the statements offered. And importantly, young Sinti/Roma respondents demonstrated high levels of bitterness with present conditions in Hungary and were particularly likely to agree with the use of political violence to effect change. Additionally, respondents living in rural areas were more likely to judge present circumstances as pretty hopeless for young people; and girls and young women were generally less inclined to favour personal involvement in political violence than were boys and young men. Finally, regression analysis of the attitudinal associations between nationalism/racism and political violence for this sample indicates a strong relationship between the two themes. The stronger the agreement with nationalist/racist views, the greater the acceptance of political violence. The link between nationalist views and acceptance of political violence equally holds for the Sinti/Roma respondents. Nationalism and 'racism' would appear, then, to operate in a functionally parallel manner in relation to attitudes towards the use of violence for political ends.

Conclusions This study's findings underline once more the relevance of social and educational background and experience in the formation of political-moral attitudes. Where social and educational inequalities become more marked, we can expect increasingly noticeable divergences in the patterns of attitudes and values held in the population in accordance with the social and educational positions and resources available to them. Given the tightening links between educational qualification level and labour market chances and risks under democratic capitalism, the prospects of those young people who are unable to secure an adequate level of qualification to compete on reasonable terms are a matter of increasing concern. The possible consequences may be especially worrying in societies whose young people have only recently and suddenly become faced with such (previously unknown) difficulties. Currently, between 10% and 15% of each age cohort in Hungary do not complete eight-year compulsory secondary education. Their realistic prospects are now either unemployment or dead-end jobs, often on the black economy. About a third of each age cohort complete compulsory schooling and go on to a vocational training school. However, these schools enjoy a poor reputation amongst the general population, in that they are judged to have poor academic standards; and indeed, they do have to cope with a proportion of students who remain functionally illiterate, despite having completed compulsory schooling. Drop-out rates from this kind of post-compulsory school are relatively high; but those who do complete their courses and earn the matura qualification this bestows, find that it does not permit them to pursue higher education at colleges and universities. At the same time, the courses offered are no longer welladapted to present labour market demands; the matura now has little currency value when looking for employment. These young people, too, are faced with a significant

194

O. T6th

unemployment risk and job opportunities that are typically restricted to temporary and precarious employment. Under these circumstances, it is not surprising that many young Hungarians experience a disillusion and despair whose consequences may include a higher level of acceptance of more 'desperate' political action in the hope of improvement in their situations. Those young people whose own prospects look somewhat more hopeful - in that they are attending upper level secondary education and can aspire to higher education and ultimately better jobs - are less likely to feel that only desperate measures can resolve their problems. Additionally, those whose own parents are more highly educated and, in consequence, typically have secure jobs and a reasonable income - all the upheavals of the past years notwithstanding - obviously benefit from the economic buffer and the 'cultural capital' that their families can offer across this period of transition and transformation. In other words, the results of this study support the conclusion that widening inequality and deteriorating circumstances and prospects contribute to the development and adoption of nationalism, 'racism' and political violence. The situation of young people from Sinti/Roma backgrounds provides us with a striking example. In this survey, 5% of the respondents belonged to these ethnic groups, but they represented no less than 25% of the unemployed young people in the sample. Their highly marginalised position in the labour market is a consequence of their marginalisation and exclusion from education: very high proportions of young Sinti/Roma do not complete compulsory schooling and they are therefore hopelessly disadvantaged when it comes to finding jobs. Their families are generally unable to cushion their difficult transition to paid work, since they too are the poorest section of Hungarian society. There is nothing in Sinti/Roma cultural traditions that would point to an affinity with nationalism or political violence - quite the reverse might be expected - and yet, in this study, young Sinti/Roma displayed a higher level of acceptance of these values than did the 'indigenous Hungarian' respondents as a whole. This pattern also held for those respondents in more educationally, socially and economically disadvantaged situations regardless of their ethnic group membership. It is, therefore, the concentration of young Sinti/Roma amongst the disadvantaged that prompts greater acceptance of nationalism and political violence; the fact that they must also cope with the anti-'gypsy' views held by many indigenous Hungarian young people and especially those who are themselves disadvantaged in similar ways - adds a further pressuring factor to their alienation and bitterness. This can only lead us to conclude that paying more attention to alleviating social and economic inequalities between young people should become a policy imperative in Hungary, as elsewhere.

Growing Up on the EU Periphery: Portugal José Machado Pais

Introduction Portugal joined the European Community in 1986, after the fall of the dictatorship in 1974 and the independence then granted to the former Portuguese colonies. Membership of the Community brought with it an immediate and significant drive to modernise the economy and business practice, and to open up the country's markets. The Portuguese economy was launched into accelerating growth, largely as a consequence of the injection of structural funds from the Community. Trailing behind the rest of the Community pack, Portugal has been seeking to move up the field, or at least to shorten the distance which separates it from the leaders of the pack. However, the shock treatment which has been administered to achieve this has been controversial, in terms of both its economic and social effects. From an economic point of view, it has to be asked whether the modernisation of the country amounts to no more than an incomplete attempt, late in the day, to adapt to predetermined external models. And whether, as a result, the process will not inexorably reinforce Portugal's peripheral position in Europe (Mateus 1992). Indeed, despite the effort put into modernisation, a number of peripheral patterns still tend to reproduce themselves, or even to emerge more strongly in new guises. For instance, since the early decades of this century Portugal's two main cities (Lisboa and Oporto) have acted as a magnet to sizeable contingents of the rural population living on the brink of poverty. Their standard of living has since improved. But the phenomenon of'social peripherisation' has not disappeared. From the 1960s onwards there has been increasing migration of Africans from Portugal's former colonies, keeping up the flow of the new urban poor. Excluded from society, they are forced to depend for survival on the shadier and insecure industries of the black economy. They live in appalling conditions in shanty towns (bairros de lata - 'tin towns'), in houses they build out of old wooden planks, cardboard and scrap metal. There is no water, drainage or electricity. Possibly as a result of an over-abrupt model of modernisation, in Portugal today the centres of new technology and the gleaming new shopping centres and industrial complexes often overlook the slums and sub-standard housing (Medeiros 1992). From a social point of view, the results of modernisation - or perhaps it would be more appropriate to say selective modernisation - have been dramatic. Portugal is faced

196

J. M. Pais

with social problems derived from chronic underdevelopment and at the same time by the problems confronted by countries higher up the economic ladder. Selective modernisation is a feature of two-stream societies, resulting in ambiguous and diffuse patterns of development, and in social distortions and dysfunctions caused by the clash between 'archaic' and 'traditional' forces. For example, the traditional family business continues to serve the economic ambitions of much of the established lower middle class. In the north of the country, many small-scale industrial concerns continue to draw on a cheap source of family labour which subsists thanks to the continued existence of family smallholdings which yield the potatoes, vegetables and wine for everyday living. In the midst of all the changes, the phenomenon of social exclusion has affected all social classes in Portugal, and even such classes which would seem to be reasonably well protected have in some way been affected by one or other form of exclusion. There is talk of the 'new poor', and downward social mobility is to be found not only in the middle classes, but also in élite business classes hit by the sectorial and regional readjustments required by Community membership (Almeida 1993). However, when we look at the situation in generational terms, we find an interesting phenomenon. On the one hand, the young (15 to 29 years) seem to be the most vulnerable to the impact of social change. It is the young who lose out most from the insecurity of employment, which has driven them out to the black economy (Pais 1991a)1 On the other hand, the young are by far the readiest to accept the modernisation of society. The process of modernisation in Portugal is held back by ideological objection from older generations. Like Boudon (1990), we could say that in the process of social change "ideas and values play a more important role than is sometimes thought". In any case, modernisation in Portugal is happening (or not happening) against a background of ideological conflict between generations.

The tug of war The peripheries are subject to an interesting yo-yo movement which results from the play of contradictory forces: centripetal (inwards to the centre) and centrifugal (outwards from the centre). The former are driven by modernisation (economic development), the latter by tradition. We can regard the centrifugal forces therefore as conservative, as those which constitute the raison d'etre of the peripheries. They may be defined as 'persistent identities', resisting social change (Nisbeth 1972). In this 'tug of war', involving forces pulling in opposite directions, the older generations appear more resistant to change, the young people in favour of it. It is no surprise to find, in a survey conducted in 1987, that Portuguese young people chose 'economic development' as the most important factor for the future of Portugal. With irrepressible optimism, a clear majority (more than 60%) went as far as to predict that within ten years Portugal would achieve a standard of living equal to the European Community average (Survey 1987). The attraction to the 'centre' felt by young people in Portugal is also

Growing Up on the EU Periphery: Portugal

197

suggested by the fact that fully half harbour the desire to emigrate. Or rather, 'if Mohammed won't climb the mountain, the mountain will come down to Mohammed': if the 'centre' won't come to the 'periphery', the young people set out to conquer the 'centre'. The Portuguese are, after all, traditionally a nation of emigrants. Consequently, the destinations chosen for emigration are those established by tradition: Switzerland, the USA, Germany and France, in order of preference (ibid ). But there is a difference between the old emigrants and their potential followers: the former came from the poorest sectors of rural society and left the periphery merely to save up a nest egg, hoping always one day to return home. The new potential emigrants, however, do not reject the idea of making a life for themselves outside Portugal, and even marrying a foreigner. Modern lifestyles and attitudes are far more prevalent among younger generations than in any other group in Portugal. Young people think that economic progress 'brings comfort and material advantages', as well as 'more opportunities for professional selfrealisation' (Cabral, Freitas and Rodrigues 1993). It is also the young who are most motivated by the idea of success and most likely to be guided by the values of modern development. The older people are, the greater their reserves about the typical indicators of modern development. The oldest in society see social conflict as 'harmful, as it disrupts the workings of the economy and society1, or else as 'pointless', and the advantages associated with a market economy ('competition leads to new products', or 'competition benefits the consumer') are downplayed in relations to the drawbacks ('competition causes businesses to go bankrupt', 'competition causes unemployment'). Older generations continue to display a deep attachment to the idea of a 'protectionist' state and to 'outside support' as means to economic development in Portugal (ibid ), thereby unconsciously aligning themselves with old anthropological ideas about diffusion, whereby all social change is exogenous, rather than voluntarist, as held by the functionalist school (Parsons, 1970). The tug of war would therefore seem to be a war between generations. The older generations pull towards the side of tradition (periphery) whilst the young generations pull towards modernisation (centre). The tug of war assumes the proportions of a conflict in milieux where the tension between centripetal and centrifugal forces is highest, namely in rural milieux and those where the influence of religion is strongest. It is in these milieux that, ideologically, the generation gap or intergenerational conflict is at its greatest (Pais and Santos 1989). Young women bear the brunt. The daughters of rural and religious parents face the greatest intolerance on the question of boyfriends and girlfriends kissing on the mouth, or going out at night (Pais 1985). Urban parents are happier to let themselves be socialised by their children, which helps to bring the generations closer together. In research carried out in suburban Lisbon, it was found that middle class parents encourage their children to bring their friends home and often join in youth activities. This might be to keep a closer eye on them, but this requires them to put up a front acceptable to the young people, in what they wear, in the topics of conversation, etc. Parents with daughters take extra care in controlling the social life of

198

J. M. Pais

their offspring. Some even go out to discothèques with them (Pais 1993b). In other words, young people on the periphery experience the 'tug of war' to a significantly different extent, depending on the field of play (urban/rural) and the protagonists (boys/girls).

The new strength: youth capital The centripetal forces involve investment of financial capital, while the centrifugal forces persist with investments of social capital. For Coleman (1990), social capital consists of the social relations (family, community, etc.) which involve attention and time spent by members of the family or community in the development of the younger generations (human capital). 'Financial capital' consists of monetary spending by formal institutions in pursuit of the same objective. It is never easy to read into the future. But there would seem to be every indication that the young people of today are going without large parts of the social capital traditionally handed down from one generation to another. This is what Coleman is talking about when he raises the alarm that the family has ceased to be a source of social capital for teenagers and young people. In an historical analysis of the relations between children/adolescents and the family, Coleman (op. cit.) distinguishes three phases, in terms of their potential for the investment of human capital in the new generations. In the first phase, the family lived at a level close to subsistence. This is a phase typical of rural societies. Most of what was consumed was actually produced by the family. Trade and the division of labour were minimal. On family farms child labour was considered useful labour. Families had a lot of children and exploited their working potential because everyone had to lend a hand for the family to subsist. The financial investment by families in their children was minimal, and in any case they lacked the resources. On the other hand, the families made great investments in social capital, by handing down productive skills, beliefs and values which guaranteed social reproduction. In the second phase most of the family's needs are met by exchanging wages for consumer goods. This phase is typical of post-agricultural society, i.e. an urban and industrial society based on a commercial economy. The child ceases to interest the family as a potential worker. But the family continues to reveal a keen interest in young generations. Investment of human capital in adolescents and young people is still viewed as an investment in the family's future. The parents expect the children to care for them in their old age. The investment in the education of their children (good qualifications) is made in response to this concern. The third phase is typical of post-industrial societies. Families are unsure whether investment in their children's education will in fact help them get on in a career. The economic and social functions of the family are transferred to other institutions. Families lose their influence on the process of growing up. There is a disinvestment of social capital in adolescents and young people.

Growing Up on the EU Peripheiy: Portugal

199

In Portugal, because of its location on the periphery, and the correlation of the centripetal and centrifugal forces referred to above, the three phases coexist side by side.

- In the rural north of Portugal, children work on the land, and are used as a clandestine source of cheap labour by the textile and other industries. Families encourage children to start earning their living at a young age, calling school a 'breeding groundfor thieves'. They do not believe in the official institutions as agents in the formation of 'human capital' (first phase). - Parents of the new and upwardly mobile lower middle classes invest in the future of their children in the hope they will have the sunny future they themselves missed out on. School is valued as a route upwards to a better place in society. For the parents, the costs of keeping their children longer in education are substantially higher than for those of higher social classes. For this reason they hope that their children will be able to support them in their old age. Clearly, the démocratisation of the education system over the last three decades in Portugal has tended to downvalue qualifications. It is the outlying regions of Europe (especially the Mediterranean, including Portugal) which have the highest rates of long term unemployment, with the young the hardest hit. Families that choose the course of keeping their children in education for longer have to abide the uncertainty of whether they will eventually enjoy the rewards (Pais 1993b) (secondphase). - The urban middle classes recognise their inability to provide their children with 'social capital' as is reflected in the growth in educational establishments. The children become more independent of their parents. Leisure activities, for example, cease to be centred on the home. While the older generations prefer to stay at home and watch television after a tiring day at the office, the young prefer to go out to the café with their friends, after a day at school or college. The leisure industries take over the socialisation of the young, replacing the family in its traditional role. Children watch cartoons on television instead of listening to stories from the their grandparents. Traditional (community) games which children would once watch have given way to computer games. The role of the family in the education of its young has shrunk significantly. The flow of 'social capital', in the sense used by Coleman, has been diverted, atrophied (thirdphase). As w e see, the mechanisms whereby 'human capital' is produced are varied on the 'periphery'. But as has happened in the 'centre' (third phase), difficulties have emerged in the transmission of 'social capital' from parents to children. Especially among the urban upper-middle classes, the family has become more important as a source of 'financial capital', serving as an economic foundation for meeting the needs of the young people as consumers - needs which are in many cases fostered by the media. Television has become one of the main sources of information for young people. Children's programmes are assessed less for their negative effects on children, from a psychological point of view, and more on the grounds of higher ratings. The same is true of other leisure and

200

J. M. Pais

consumer industries targeting their wares at children and young people. The profit motive rules OK, regardless of whether they sell toys, cereals, sweets, drinks, clothes, music or hamburgers. But the fact is that the youngsters embrace each wave of consumer opportunities, and their families keep supplying the money to keep their young afloat on this sea of consumption (Joosens and Bontinckx 1993). Young people from working class families, both rural and urban, display other models of relating to their parents. Those who work, and are unmarried, generally give all their wages to their parents, who in turn, 'decide' to give them a small cut for their day-to-day expenses. But this is far from meaning that these young people are unwilling consumers or blind to the allure of money. Rather, they feel a 'moral obligation' to contribute to their families' scant income. Moreover, the girls start very early to save for their weddings, and for the boys, 'having money in their pockets' allows them to follow the rules for masculine display (drinks, bikes, etc.). These are important in rural and working class milieux, and involve certain expense. In view of this, it is no surprise that unemployment is experienced in markedly different ways by young people of different social classes, despite the unifying nature of much youth symbology. It is very likely that the desocialising effect of unemployment is much more dramatic in working class milieux, where the work ethic is stronger, and young people have greater expectations of starting work early in life. In this case, eveiy effort is made to use social capital from the family and the community (asking for favours and recommendations, getting in by the back door, etc.). Family circles and neighbourhood relations interact and work together in the search for a job. Young women in the working class cope with unemployment by embracing domesticity. Their middle class peers tend to take refuge in status-giving alternatives, such as higher education. The young men in the middle classes are more prepared to take a chance on their future career by taking up insecure or risky employment (such as setting up a small business), or else by going for a career in the arts or media, marketing or sales. When they opt for this course, they are more likely to school themselves in the cultural apparatus of their class than to seek conventional educational success. Coleman (1990) is right to point to a loss of'social capital' traditionally handed down from old to young. Portuguese young people (aged 15 to 29) seem keen to live out of the reach of their parents. In 1987, only a fifth expressed the wish to stay on at home (the younger age groups, aged 15 to 17). The large majority would rather move out to a rented room or apartment (with friends, with boy/girlfriend, wife/husband, or alone). Coleman sets out on an interesting track - showing the loss of traditional social capital amongst the younger generation - but he only goes halfway. He does not explore the possibility that the traditional social capital might have new substitutes. In other words, the loss of family social capital does not necessarily prevent other, typically juvenile, forms of capital from emerging. Denied the social capital which preceding generations have gradually stopped handing down, young people make other social investments. More precisely, they invest in daily sociabilities with friends (Pais 1993a). It is with their friends that young people spend

201

Growing Up on the EU Periphery: Portugal

most of their free time, and with them that they most talk and enjoy themselves, share opinions and feel at ease (see Table 1 below). Table 1: People who young people relate to best (aged ¡5 to 29) Type of relationship

father

mother siblings partner friends colleague school fellow 5.1 4.4 28.4 52.4 4.0 2.1

no-one

spend time with

1.4

hang around with

0.5

1.4

3.6

27.4

58.6

2.0

4.2

0.8

converse with

2.2

5.6

4.4

30.4

49.1

2.8

3.7

0.5

opinions in common

3.2

6.2

6.5

30.1

44.0

1.8

3.3

3.1

most comfortable with

3.3

9.3

7.2

31.4

41.4

1.4

3.1

1.2

15.1

25.4

4.1

25.7

19.7

0.9

1.9

5.6

go to for advice

1.0

Source: Survey of Portuguese Young People, 1987 (sample = 2000) Conviviality is one of the most highly valued aspects of life of young people aged between 15 to 29. School is valued mainly because for the chance it gives for making friends and spending time with them (this is the attitude of 83% of Portuguese young people). School students feel happiest in the playground/yard, common room/canteen and the gymnasium/playing field. They are the most unhappy in the classrooms and the libraries (Survey of Portuguese Young People 1987). It turns out that most of the misdemeanours committed by school students derive from an ethic of conviviality, in which the aim is to have fun. In a recent survey conducted in the Greater Lisbon area (Survey 1993) w e found that this was the ethic which led students to 'skip classes', 'play pranks on teachers', 'smoke joints' and 'get pissed'. H o w can w e explain the emergence of this ethic of conviviality amongst the student population? It may be the successor to a work ethic in decay, given the employment situation. It is the outlying (Mediterranean) regions of the European Union which register the highest levels of long term unemployment, and young people are the most affected. In Portugal, around nine tenths seeking their first job over the last decade have been young people (mostly young women). In addition to this, the Iberian peninsula has the highest proportion in Europe of fixed term contracts, at double the EU average. In other words, on the European periphery, more jobs mean less job security, lower skills and lower wages. As w e have seen, a considerable number of Portuguese young people have been marginalised in the job market and have lost access to large reserves of social capital which in times past younger generations inherited from their forbears. They are sent out to school, but even there they do not feel formally integrated. School is the formal domain: the buildings, the chairs lined up in rows, school rules, teaching methods, discipline, registers. Young people prefer the informal domain, conviviality, having fun (Pais 1991b and 1993 a). They partially overcome their difficulty in adapting to a formal system by constructing an 'alternative reality' in the gaps left untouched by the institutional reality of the school system. In general, they express a low level of satisfaction with school or education (Survey of Portuguese Young People 1987). Relations with the teaching staff are minimal (for

202

J. M. Pais

example, limited to asking what subjects will come up in a test, why their mark is lower than they expected or asking for something to be explained again, etc.), and the subjects which young people broach with their teachers are few in number. Only in arts subjects, or in vocational or sports lessons do a small proportion o f students (never more than a quarter) speak with their teachers - and then with a few only. Only 8 % o f students discuss personal or sexual issues with their teachers. The investment which young students make in sociabilistic capital can therefore be interpreted as an alternative investment, in view o f the absence o f social capital at home or at school. Why do some students not believe in the utility of educational capital? First o f all because they find the lessons boring and prefer meeting their friends at the café to putting up with the uninteresting drone o f the teacher. Secondly, some young people have come to the realisation that just having a good education is not enough for getting a good job, so they disinvest from education, further discouraged by bad marks. All this fosters an anti-school mentality. Young people from disadvantaged backgrounds (economically and culturally) face the further difficulty that when they arrive at school or college they are confronted with a culture which is not their own. To achieve educational success they have to be 'bicultural', which is not always possible. A recent survey showed that 5 5 % o f the Portuguese population currently aged between 18 and 64 grew up in a sub-educated environment, i.e. in a family where their mother, and often also their father, were illiterate (Cabral, Freitas and Rodrigues, 1993). How can such a cultural handicap be overcome, even when educational reforms give priority to equality of opportunity? In other words, the education system ends up by actually denying qualifications to precisely those students to whom it preaches equality o f opportunity. Young people in this situation find themselves caught up in a circle o f failure, retaking exams rather than moving on. Absenteeism and examination failure rates are high. School is where youth cultures o f resistance emerge.

The liberation (or otherwise) of young people on the periphery For many young people, youth capital may be interpreted as resistance capital. Society and institutions (dominated by adults) exert control, to which young people offer resistance through leisure activities involving sensory pleasure: rock 'n' roll, dance, fashion, sex, sport. For the same reason, adults - who value that which is controlled and programmed -

devalue these pleasures,

and think them eccentric.

In a society

characterised by 'image marketing', images themselves turn into 'weapons o f resistance' (Hall and Jefferson 1976; Hebridge 1979; Ewen 1988). Torn jeans and second hand clothes can represent a rejection o f an ethos o f all-out consumerism. The rap haircuts o f young Africans can be a symbol o f ethnic harmony or else a style solution to a number o f problems created by racist ideologies. Women appropriating men's clothing can symbolise a desire for emancipation.

Growing Up on the EU Periphery: Portugal

203

It is interesting to note that these cultures of resistance, even in countries of the 'centre', start with young people at the 'social periphery' and sometimes underpin movements of relative liberation/emancipation. This is the case in Portugal with young women, who are increasingly less 'peripheral', more and more the mistresses of their own bodies, their sexuality and their futures, especially in urban, middle class families. A recent survey of suburban youth (Survey 1993) showed that young women (like young men) openly question sexualities as defined by traditional criteria of morality. In another survey of social behaviour in Lisbon (residents aged 15 and over) it was also very significant that half of the women questioned (including a number of married women) have the habit of making advances to the opposite sex (Survey 1994). So it would seem that men have lost exclusive rights to seduction (which they probably never had). It is probably nearer the truth to say that it has become more permissible for women to take a lead openly. Twenty or thirty years ago the moral climate in Portugal would never have pardoned behaviour of this type. A women who openly made sexual advances - be she a housewife, a factory worker, a nurse or a teacher - would be considered a seductress and the worst conclusions would be drawn. But here, too, advances are offset by retreats, in an intricate yo-yo movement. For example, in ideological terms (yo ...), most young men agree with the equality of rights between men and women. But in practice (yo ...) we find that 99% of young married men in Portugal think their young wives are responsible for 'doing the shopping', 'cleaning the house'and 'getting the meals'. For a majority of couples a joint decision is taken only 'when a family asset (house, land, appliance, car, etc.) has to be bought or sold' (Pais, 1985). There is a Portuguese saying that "a man rules his wife, but at home she wears the trousers". It seems that although the first part of the saying is hard to refute, the second is hard to confirm.

The principle of reversibility and the reinvention of youth: the yo-yo generation The juvenile condition and the process of transition to adult life are both highly ambiguous in Portugal. The principle of reversibility in the processes of transition (educational, professional and marital) leads us to label the generation of the 1990s as the yo-yo generation. The traditional thresholds of growing up (leaving home, marriage, first job) have become highly reversible. The traditional distinctions of student/non-student, worker/non-worker, single/married have been overtaken by a multiplicity of intermediate and reversible states, of a more or less transitory nature. The sequence of the thresholds has ceased to be either linear or uniform: leaving home does not necessarily coincide with finishing education or marriage. Likewise, work experience can be gained while still being a student, cohabitation sometimes precedes finding steady employment. For an appreciable proportion of Portuguese young women, childbirth either precedes or is independent of matrimony (Portugal and Greece have the highest rates of teenage pregnancy, one tenth of total births). The process of growing up

204

J. M. Pais

is marked by heterogeneity and characterised in large part by discontinuity and rupture (Pais 1993a). The 'yo-yo generation', by its very nature, experiences time cyclically, inasmuch as they can jump back and forth between status-passages. The speed and ease with which young people of this generation leave school, find a job and get married (growing up from young people to adults) is matched by the speed with which they lose their jobs, go back to education and divorce, rediscovering their youth. The daily lives of this generation do not follow an abstract 'time arrow', guiding them along linear trajectories, moving inexorably and irreversibly forwards. The passage to adulthood is a knot always ready to be untied. This is the case, for example, of young people who leave their juvenile status behind on getting married, only to reinvent it when they separate or divorce. This is becoming increasingly normal amongst the young middle classes. The 'principle of reversibility' means that some young people leave education and expect to start a career, only to go back to the system, having failed to find a job. Others stay on at school, but feel out of place. The 'principle of reversibility' can also be observed in family life. A few decades ago, leaving home most often meant getting married. But today, leaving home while still unmarried is increasingly common, and most young people who live outside the family home do not cease to be in some way dependent upon their parents. Of those, on the other hand, who do leave home to marry, a significant number divorce and return to the family home. Indeed, the frustration felt by some young people today can not be exclusively ascribed to expectations of social mobility and employment, expectations which are artificially inflated by a longer stay in education (compulsory education has increased by five years from the generation of parents to children). Young people are increasingly believers in romantic love, but the chances of failure are also greater, as rising divorce rates testify.

The new condition of youth: yoooooh ... or the wider swing In Portugal, as in other European countries, the process of growing up has lengthened. Problems specific to young people are now experienced by children. There are children who have caught the fear of unemployment off their parents. In upwardly mobile families, the parents take great pains to give children a 'good education', and in addition to school the children are sent off to language lessons, swimming, karate, music, computing, etc.. The over-occupied children are left with no time to play, lose out irretrievably on childhood, and behave like 'little grown-ups'. In urban and rural working class milieux (and this is a phenomenon typical of the 'periphery'), there are those who, from lack of means, are forced to eam a living, before they can barely read or write. Factory kids are a common feature of life in northern Portugal. In Lisbon, the population of street kids is already significant. These are children who live on their own wits. They sleep in the street and steal from shops and supermarkets to survive. In carparks they guide drivers to empty parking places. Others wait at traffic lights, bucket in hand, and clean windscreens

Growing Up on the EU Periphery: Portugal

205

in exchange for a few escudos. They can be seen hawking sticking plasters and paper tissues, or begging from foreigners at tourist attractions (the 'periphery' also has its charms, drawing tourists from the 'centre'). In the early hours some are to be seen scavenging in the rubbish for cardboard or anything else they can use. Prostitution is another option. In the cities and the middle classes, other factors have helped to lengthen youth as a life-stage, not least the increased time spent in education and delayed entry into employment. Unemployment has also contributed to the fact that young people are less and less likely to be working. The percentage of young people as part of total unemployment is as high as 50%. The proportion of young people in temporary employment is also considerable (Meulders and Tytgar 1989). Moreover, in the last ten years casual employment has grown at ten times the rate of stable employment (Huet 1992). The proportion of young people suffering long term unemployment has given rise to significant phenomena of exclusion, especially amongst those with low levels of qualifications, certain categories of women (in declining industries; single parents, etc.). With casual labour increasingly the norm, many young people are left to spin from one job to another, with intervening spells of unemployment, like an ever-returning yo-yo. In any case, the proportion of young people leaving education before the age of 20 in Portugal remains one of the highest in Europe, comparable only with the United Kingdom (OECD 1988) where the education system is based on the old principle of 'early selection-low participation (Chisholm 1992a). Young people in Portugal often face an educational dilemma, which from the school's point of view can be translated into a paradox: he/she loves me (and is leaving), he/she loves me not (and stays on). Some two fifths of young people who left school early wish they had had the chance to stay on - but they left all the same, mostly because of economic hardship. Representations of school are like those of military service: 'a drag, but it had its moments'. On the other hand, around one fifth still at school would rather be working, but stay on at school because 'it isn't easy to find a job' (Survey of Portuguese Young People 1987). For these youngsters, school is a 'waiting room' for the potentially unemployed.

Swinging backwards and forwards: the ethic of experimentation The consumerism of contemporary society is increasingly omnivorous and all-pervading. A proliferation of markedly hedonistic values can be observed among young people. Around 70% of Portuguese young people think that having money means 'you can enjoy life much more' and 'be free to do what you want' (ibid ). As it gets harder to find a job, young people turn to consumption for their socialisation. One characteristic of the yo-yo generation is the pervasive ethic of experimentation. Once internalised, it allows the youngster to set off on a walking tour of a variety of professional, educational or marital states and statuses - giving rise to the yo-yo movement. Even the more spectacular manifestations of rebellious teenage behaviour (petty thieving, breaches of the peace,

206

J. M. Pais

motorcycle stunts) can be interpreted as r e a l i s a t i o n s of a certain derailment

of

behaviour, which at any moment can get back on track. This propensity for consumption may also be explained by the desire to experience, in reality, the imagined pleasures propagated by the dreams of consumption. This tendency is further sustained by the fact that 'modern hedonism 1 (Campell 1987) develops through the power of the imagination. Unlike the 'traditional realist hedonism' in which consumption was subject to a certain sort of instinctive drive to meet basic needs, or an irresistible urge to emulate others, the principle components of the 'modern hedonism' are phantasmagorical realities, where the pleasures of fantasy blur with the pleasures of reality. Consequently, the consummation of desire (for desires are the favourite targets of consumption) is often a disappointment, as reality fails to live up to the perfection of the dream, which feeds new illusory pleasures, constantly renewed and disavowed by reality. This 'waking dream', typical of modern hedonism, means that the object sought is not so much the satisfaction of consumer needs as the pleasure of auto-illusory experiences, constructed from meanings drawn from the dreams of consumption. Under this hedonistic ethic, reality (topia) exists principally to feed dreams (utopia), not so much with the good it yields, but mainly with the bad, because this dictates that illusions be redrawn. This utopification of reality, the swing between a material yo and a mental yo, is another characteristic of the 'yo-yo generation'.

Conclusion Over the past t w o decades selective modernisation in Portugal has sent shocks through the social structure of the country, leading to breakdown at some points of the process of social and cultural reproduction. Various changes in the labour market have produced new forms of entering into working life (unemployment, insecure employment, etc.). Young people's relations with institutions - school, family and marriage - are also shifting, although the social constraints and prescriptions concerning the passage to adulthood are felt differently in different social classes. The relationship between generations has also changed. The older generations take a more pessimistic view of modernisation, while the young people are more openly in favour. The state has had to institute political and economic mechanisms to organise and regulate new flows of gifts/payments between generations. The crisis in the welfare state in part reflects the difficulties in dividing fiscal benefits and penalties between different generations (Bengston and Achenbaum 1993). Despite wide social differences amongst themselves, the young generation of the nineties may go down in history as the 'yo-yo generation'. The image fits European youth in general, in particular those of the EU periphery, and can be described as follows. Firstly, the yo-yo movement is characteristic of peripheries and results from the combined action of centripetal forces (inwards to the centre) and centrifugal forces (outwards from the centre). The former are driven by modernisation, the latter by tradition. Secondly, the

Growing Up on the EU Periphery: Portugal

207

centripetal forces involve investment of financial capital in young generations, while the centrifugal forces persist with investments of social capital. But we find a singular (counter)movement: young people turn into autonomous investors, by producing their own capital (essentially sociabilistic in nature). The formation of youth capital, in a field of centripetal forces, is propitious for liberation/emancipation movements among the more peripheral of the periphery's young people. Nonetheless, old inequalities persist. Thirdly, the yo-yo movement is visible in the way that the traditional thresholds in the passage to adulthood - leaving home, marriage, finding a job - are increasingly reversible. For the 'yo-yo generation', time is cyclical, in as much as it is possible to jump back and forth between status-passages. Fourthly, the amplitude of the yo-yo movement has tended to dilate (...yoooooh): on the one hand the specific problems of the juvenile condition have begun to be experienced by children, whilst on the other hand young people arrive at adulthood with the resources of youth capital as part of their cultural make-up. The phase of life corresponding to youth has thus dilated in two directions: backwards into childhood and forwards into adulthood. Finally, to swing back and forth - like a yo-yo is characteristic of current young lifestyles, subject as they are to an ethic of experimentation (at work, in love, etc.). This ethic is founded on a modern hedonism whose essential features are: omnivorous consumerism, feeding desires to experiment everything, a multiple identity, leading to a diffuse self, in which desire constantly wavers, and sensibilities mutate from day to day. Finally, an open question. If new social realities are followed by the shadow of new theories, do some of the ideas of this paper lead to an independent theory of social change for the periphery? And how far can they be applied to the centre? The question has to remain open, but we may still pose the hypothesis that the periphery seems to experience two-speed social change: high speed change driven by the logic of centrality (young people are eagerly enthusiastic about these high speeds) and a slow pace of change, or even back-pedalling (more to the taste of older generations), which tends to reproduce the logic of peripherality. However, it is not rare to find these different speeds intersecting. For example, although young people are ideologically inclined towards the 'centre', they may, episodically, rely on benefits of a 'peripheral' nature. This is what happens when they find themselves unemployed and draw on the support of their network of family and neighbours. The speeds of social change on the periphery are difficult to determine. On the winding roads of progress, a driver who steps suddenly on the accelerator risks coming off track on the next bend. The logic of development, for example, collides with the logic of family subsistence, and it is the latter which still rules in the rural communities of the periphery. Which are the most appropriate, or socially convenient, models of development? How can we deal with the two-way tug of identity experienced by those who feel themselves en route to the centre, but still with strong roots in the periphery? Most likely, however, we will experience another factor even more difficult to determine. Given the increasing flows between centre and periphery - tourists, the money markets, migrant workers, refugees, etc. - as part of an acknowledged process of social

208

J. M. Pais

globalisation, the hierarchical scale defining centre and periphery begins to blur. The centre also generates social exclusion,as the epicentre of centre-specific peripheries. This give-and-take between centre and periphery - in consumer habits, leisure, the ebb and flow of growing up - causes us to look back in doubt at our theoretical convictions. Ail understanding of these new realities may require us to make use of multiple range theories, uniquely able to consider a huge range of possibilities (both progressive and regressive) and the changeable conditions under which young people grow up in Europe today. Notes 1 Research is carried out under the Youthwatch Scheme of the Institute of Social Sciences of the University of Lisbon, with support from the National Technological and Scientific Research Council.

Gendered Youth Transitions in Northern Greece: Between Tradition and Modernity through Education Kiki Deliyanni-Kouimtzi

and Roula

Ziogou

Introduction "I am going to become a famous doctor. In the morning I will go to my office. I will spend the rest of my day with my family though. I will do the housework, I will cook and I will do all the things that a good housewife should do. I will help my children with their lessons, so that they do well in school and don't face problems later in their life. At night, my husband and I will watch television and we will talk about how we spent our day. We will discuss all our problems and our day will end like this".

This text is an essay with the subject "Me at the age of 25" and it was written by a 14year-old Greek schoolgirl as part of research (Deliyanni-Koumtzi 1992) whose aim was to study the aspirations of teenage girls for their future lives as adult women. We chose to present this extract here, because we believe that it magnificently portrays the framework in which the transition of girls from adolescence to adulthood occurs. It is a framework determined by contradictory societal expectations and whose basic characteristics are dilemmas and conflicts, the most important of which are those between further education and marriage, between the demands of a career and those of a family, between resistance and conformity. In this report, we will attempt to paint a more precise picture of the way in which girls' occupational choices are formed in the specific framework of Greek society. As an initial backdrop, let us take a look at the social status of women in Greece, using the latest data concerning their access to education and the job market.

Greek women's education and job market access The educational participation of girls is shown in Table 1 (on p. 203) A comparison of data from the academic years 1981-1982 and 1991-1992 indicates that there has been a significant change in the passage of girls to higher education during the last decade: the overall percentage of girls involved has risen from 43% to 54%. In pre-school and primary education, girls' participation rates remain lower than those of boys. Yet in secondary general education and in higher education, women outnumber men during 1991-92, although significantly fewer women are found in secondary technicalprofessional education and higher technological education. In general terms, these figures

210

K. Deliyanni-Kouimtzi and R. Ziogou

clearly show that a large percentage of boys and girls stay in school after they have completed their compulsory education and the second cycle of secondary education. A significant proportion of pupils of both genders who complete secondary education go on to higher education. If we add those studying abroad, it is indisputable that the percentage of young people who continue on to university studies is amazingly high compared to the country's total population, and is extremely advanced compared with university level participation rates in the countries of western Europe (Lampiri-Dimaki 1974; Petmetzidou-Tsoulouvi 1987). Women students at university, however, represent the majority (75-80%) in the Faculties of Arts, while they comprise only 10-15% of the total number of students in the Faculties of Science (Heliou 1985, Vretakou 1990). These data point to the intense contradictions that exist in Greek society as far as women's education is concerned. On one hand, there is the existing educational system which in Greece, like anywhere else, structures gender relations according to a dominant male ideology, leaving women on the edge of the educational process and directing them into traditional roles as well as typical female professions. On the other hand, there is a strong tendency on the part of parents, educators and the whole society in general, to consider university studies absolutely necessary for both sexes, as long as those studies do not prevent women from their primary mission, that is, the family. This contradiction shapes the statistical data in the way we have seen above. Within the context of this existing educational system, which in its turn functions within the context of this particular society, one wonders what kind of messages concerning gender equality boys and girls accept? Only very small number of research studies have been conducted in Greece under the title sexism and gender socialisation within the family and the schools. Those still fewer research results that have been published concern mainly the sexism that exists in one particular aspect of the educational process, that is, school texts (and especially literature texts) that are used during pre-school and primary education. According to the results of those studies (Deliyanni-Kouimtzis 1987; Maragoudaki 1993) the main ideology incorporated and transmitted within these texts is in agreement with the traditional stereotype of the 'invisible woman' and the 'dominant male'. Reformist intervention initiated by the Ministry of Education in order to change and revise primary school texts were not at all successful; these efforts have been paternalist in nature, initiated without seeking advice and contributions from those with direct and specialist knowledge of the matters at hand - such as women educators, women's organisations and, indeed, anyone sympathetic to feminist perspectives at all (Deliyanni-Kouimtzis 1992a). In fact, the stereotypical images of femininity and of women's lives that Greek schooling, family values and the mass media by and large project are not necessarily an accurate reflection of realities. The family and child rearing are assumed to be in Greece, like anywhere else, the main and primary destination of women. However, at the edge of this particular role, there is an intense demand that women should also study, work to be financially independent, follow demanding and ambitious careers, and participate in public

211

Gendered Youth Transitions in Northern Greece: Between Tradition and Modernity

life, while at the same time they should maintain their 'feminine' characteristics, that is tenderness, beauty, conformity, passivity and caring. Table 1: Educational participation rates in Greece Education Level

1982 - 1983 boys girls

1991 - 1992 boys girls

pre-school primary

51.2 51.8

48.8 48.2

51.1 51.4

48.9 48.6

secondary

50.2

49.8

49.2

50.8

technical secondary

75.4

24.6

66.0

34.0

higher

57.0

43.0

46.0

54.0

Total

52.3

47.2

51.5

48.5

Source: National Scientific Service 1986 and 1992 In the job market women represent 4 0 % of the workforce; but only 4 5 % of all women aged 15-64 are economically active, i.e. part of the official labour force compared with 8 5 % of men (Vretakou 1990; Petrinioti 1990). 67% of employed women are married; 4 7 % are between the ages of 25 and 44, i.e. of reproductive age. The female workforce is concentrated mainly in the area of services (40.3%) and in specific industrial sectors (17.4%) while a further 37.2% is involved in production (Hioni 1989). Women workers in Greece, as elsewhere, are typically found in the lowest positions of the professional scale (Heliou

1985; Kontogiannopoulou-Polydorides

1991),

and

in all forms

of

employment and, at all levels of education, their salaries are lower than those of men (Petrinioti 1990; Avdela 1986; Vretakou 1990). It is obvious that, in Greece, the relation between women and the labour market is structured within the context of the same kinds of factors that influence women's labour in all patriarchical/capitalistic societies. However, the fact that the percentage of employed women in Greece is one of the lowest in Europe is due basically to the lack of state childcare facilities, to the idea that parenting is mainly women's responsibility and that mothering cannot be delegated to other women. These notions are much more significant for women's restricted participation in employment than is the perception that the labour market is not a suitable place for women. Educational participation statistics underline the strong impulse to direct young Greeks of both sexes towards university, or, in general, higher education. It is obvious that girls profit from this. But if we examine the type of studies chosen by women, along with the percentage of women who are employed and the areas of work they are involved in, w e come face to face with a reality that has little to do with the optimistic picture initially conveyed by education statistics. T w o basic questions arise. The first concerns the processes by which the educational and occupational choices of girls in Greece are formed. The second concerns looking into the underlying influences that govern

these choices.

accommodative, or do they contain elements of innovation?

Are these

patterns

merely

212

K. Deliyanni-Kouimtzi and R. Ziogou

Gender and occupational choice in Greece We discuss here some of the findings of a research project conducted in 1989 in the metropolitan region of Thessaloniki, the second-largest city in Greece, situated in the north of the country. It originated as a replication study of a similar piece of research conducted in the UK during the mid-1980s (Chisholm 1990, 1993c, 1994c). The part of the Greek study reported here includes questionnaire responses from a sample of 521 1415 year olds (254 girls, 267 boys) attending twelve high schools selected to be representative of Thessaloniki eastern, central and western urban districts. These questionnaires collected information about the respondents' occupational aspirations and expectations, their knowledge of the labour market, and their attitudes towards gender divisions in paid work. The pupils completed the questionnaires in the classroom and under the supervision of a member of the research team, who endeavoured to ensure that the responses were individual and that teacher or classmates did not offer directive advice or assistance in completing the task. Here, we present the findings from two items only: pupils' spontaneous lists of jobs, and pupils' current job aspirations. These data were intended to illuminate the extent to which and ways in which gender and socio-economic status impinge upon young people's pictures of the 'working world' and to assist in interpreting the meanings that underly their occupational choices.

Joblists: young people's pictures of the working world The pupils were asked - within a given time-limit - simply to write down the first ten jobs that came to their minds. In this way, spontaneous pictures of the jobs in their worlds and in their thinking could be elicited and mapped. Table 2 (below) collates the jobs that were mentioned most frequently by girls and boys. Table 2: Joblists:

Jobs mentioned

Girls (N = 254) Rank 1. Doctor 2. S.S. Teacher 3. Lawyer 4. N.S. Teacher 5. Gymnast 6. P.S. Teacher 7. Hairdresser 8. Policewoman 9. Air Hostess 10. Architect

most frequently,

f and %

Boys (N = 267) f

%

198

83.8

192 130 94 68 58 48 47 44

81.3 55.0 39.8 28.8 23.7 20.3 19.1 18.6

40

16.9

1. Doctor 2. S.S. Teacher 3. Engineer 4. Electrician 5. Lawyer 6. Policeman 7. Pilot 8. General Employee 9.Electronics Employee 10. Gymnast

Legend: N.S. = Nursery School; P.S. = Primary School; S.S. = Secondary School

f

%

165

63.6

149

57.7

120 90 83 66 63 59 55

46.5 34.8 32.1 25.5 24.4 22.8 21.3

48

14.7

Gendered Youth Transitions in Northern Greece: Between Tradition and Modernity

213

The joblists findings confirm, overall, those of the British study. In all, 285 different occupations were mentioned at least once by the respondent sample, covering a wide status range between diplomats and university professors at one end of the scale and unskilled labourers at the other. However, only 154 of these 285 jobs were listed by both girls and boys; a further 80 were listed by boys only, a further 51 by girls only. This initial separation indicates that the 'job universes' to which girls and boys orient themselves are divided quite clearly into three macrosegments: a segment relevant (or at least visible) for oth sexes and two segments respectively relevant for one sex only. The data also suggest that the referent job universe for boys contains more occupations than that for girls. In fact, of the 285 occupations mentioned overall, eleven might be described as archetypally feminine in the Greek context: air hostess, beautician, nursery nurse/teacher, secretary/typist, social worker, hairdresser, make-up artist, fashion designer, dressmaker, telephonist and dancer. Boys' lists included only the occupation of nursery nurse/teacher; the remaining ten were only to be found on girls' lists. Two of these occupations hairdresser and air hostess - appear amongst girls' ten most frequently mentioned occupations. As Table 2 (above) shows, certain occupations were mentioned with great frequency by both sexes. These are jobs carrying status and high visibility in the local community, with which children will become familiar early on in life - notably, doctors and teachers. 14/15 year old pupils distinguish finely between schoolteachers working in different levels of the education system: secondary, primary and nursery. This is an occupation with which they have long-term close contact, of course, and the prominence of secondary school teacher on their lists points to the significance of their current proximate worlds in influencing the structuring of their job universes. The joblists in general reflect, then , the local labour market and residential composition of the urban districts in which the pupils live and go to school. The lists of those pupils living in the centre of Thessaloniki are replete with merchants, shopowners and specialist doctors, whereas those living in western Thessaloniki include a whole range of industrial occupations that do not appear very frequently at all on lists from the central and eastern districts. At the same time, only the list of girls' most frequently mentioned jobs includes all three levels of schoolteachers; for the boys, only secondary school teachers are included. This suggests that gendered normative expectations are influencing these spontaneously produced joblists too: nursery and primary teaching are jobs traditionally regarded as suitable for women, and are indeed populated very largely by women. This is emphatically not the case for men. The patternings in the joblists hint, then , at a pre-selection process in which girls and boys 'register' gender-appropiate occupational segments more clearly than (normatively) gender-inappropriate ones. The respondents were not asked here what they themselves wanted to be, i.e. their aspirations/expectations, but simply to write down the jobs that came into their heads. However, we might expect that in fact, their perceptions of a gendered working world will prestructure the range and nature of their own aspirations and expectations (or will already have done so).

214

K. Deliyanni-Kouimtzi and R. Ziogou

The structuring of the girls' lists, both in toto and in terms of ranked frequency of mention, leads to the following conclusions. Firstly, perceptions of the working world reflect a male-dominated world: male-typed and male-populated jobs occupy more 'space' overall, women's work is underrepresented. Secondly, girls' working worlds are prone to exclude manual, industrial and technical jobs, instead including in particular clerical and office jobs. The collated lists shown in Table 2 (above) reflect this selection process, which , in reverse fashion, structures boys' lists too. Girls and boys 'share' only five of the ten most frequently mentioned occupations: doctor, secondary school teacher, lawyer, policeofficer and gymnast. Thirdly, however, girls' working worlds are disproportionately made up of middle to high status occupations, which is related to variations in the strength of gender-typing of occupations at different levels of the occupational status hierarchy. In a nutshell, intermediate non-manual and professional level jobs are on the whole less strongly gender-typed than are those at the routine non-manual and manual levels (although they may still be mainly male-staffed), and are more likely to be less strongly gender-typed in the service sector than in primary and secondary industry. Where girls (for a whole range of reasons) reject or wish to avoid jobs and sectors that are strongly male-typed, but at the same time have little wish to be restricted to the small number of (often unattractive) 'women's jobs', then they must turn disproportionately towards the upper reaches of the occupational structure. There is, unsurprisingly, a positive correlation between socio-economic status origin (as measured by father's occupation; mother's occupation is not, it seems from the statistical analysis, relevant here) and the 'collated' status level of a pupils' joblist. However, gender interacts equally significantly with socio-economic status origin: it is girls of high status origin who produce the highest status joblists, and boys of low status origin who produce the lowest status joblist. These girls' ambitious aspirations for their future deserve close reflection, particularly in the Greek context, in which the pressure to achieve educationally is so strong. It is girls who are responding most keenly to these cultural imperatives, yet their qualifications and achievements are particularly likely to meet labour market and career blockages later on (see here Zanni-Teliopoulou and Stathakopoulou 1994). Finally, socio-economic status origin is also correlated with the strength of occupational gender-specificity of pupils' joblists. This means that the lower the social status origin of a respondent, the more gender-stereotyped is the resulting joblist, i.e. girls list female-typed occupations, boys male-typed ones. Young people's perceptions of the working worlds do, in fact, relate to the realities they see around them, not only in their local communities but equally in their own families. The occupations their parents, relatives and neighbours have are those that are most visible to them. The knowledge and experience that results feeds into their pictures of the social world, which, in turn, reflect - if in an exaggerated and imprecise manner - fundamental organising principles of that world: in this case, gendered and classed occupational structures and labour forces. Whilst this holds for both sexes, interesting differences in the relative correlative strengths remain. For each sex, both respondent social origin and gender significantly influenced joblists' status level and their degree of gender-typing. Boys' lists, however, were more

Gendered Youth Transitions in Northern Greece: Between Tradition and Modernity

215

heterogeneous across occupational status levels and more homogenous in terms of gender-stereotyping than were girls' lists. We might propose that in boys' worldviews, it is not necessary to 'recognise' female-typed occupations: the occupational structure offers boys a much wider range to begin with. Girls' observations and experiences, on the other hand, offer them narrower and less evenly-distributed occupational segments in the first instance. To expand their purviews, girls have two options: to broaden their picture by including jobs that are less female gender-typed; and to balance their picture by including more jobs of particularly high status or low status. Typically, girls first broaden the gendered picture, but do by selectively balancing towards higher status occupations. Essentially, this means they continue to marginalise or exclude manual occupations from their purviews. Boys simply exclude 'women's jobs', of whatever kind.

Gendered occupational choices After having completed the spontaneous joblist task, pupils were asked to write down, in order of preference, three occupations to which they currently aspired and to give their reasons for these choices. The 521 respondents returned 130 different occupations, girls significantly fewer (80). Only 51 (from 130) occupations were aspired to by both sexes; a further 50 by boys only, and the remaining 29 by girls only. These very simple data indicate the continuing extent to which occupational choice is a highly gendered phenomenon in Greece (but in Britain too, since the findings are, once more, parallel). Examples of job aspirations exclusive to the Greek girls in this study are: nursery nurse/teacher, air hostess, secretary and hairdresser-model - but also restaurateur, judge and advertising executive. Only boys aspired to becoming university professors, politicians, ship owners, industrialists and taxi-drivers - but also to technical occupations such as refrigeration technicians, marble layers and sheet metal workers. Some of these occupational aspirations are identical to those in the British study, in particular the highly female gender-typed aspirations peculiar to or popular with girls. Others are distinctive to the Greek context - for example, marble layers and ship owner for boys. Equally interesting in this respect is the absence of occupations such as university professor and politician amongst Greek girls' aspirations. Whilst these were not necessarily common aspirations for the British girls, they were not totally absent. Evidently, we are picking up both economically and culturally related differences in terms of labour market opportunities and access, gender ideologies, and occupational status hierarchies. Table 3 (overleaf) shows the ten most popular aspirations for Thessalonoki girls and boys. The lists are predictable: teaching tops the list for girls, and is followed by occupations that predominantly have to do with children, fashion and home. These aspirations are a function of the demonstration and affirmation of femininity and of the tasks and roles traditionally allocated to and performed by women. At the same time, most of the occupations to which they aspire require a higher education qualification, and some enjoy very high status; girls' rejection of manual labour and technological jobs is

216

K. Deliyanni-Kouimtzi and R. Ziogou

also evident. Boys' most popular aspirations are sharply different from those of girls, with whom they share only five occupations in this respect (doctor, gymnast, polic eofficer, secondary schoolteacher and lawyer). The remainder of the boys' 'top ten' list is filled with technology and adventure/danger (see here Holland 1988). And just as girls' overall range of aspirations is narrower than that of boys, so are their most popular aspirations concentrated into fewer jobs: the girls' list includes 13 occupations for ten preference rankings, the boys' list 16. The well-known 'overcrowding' of women's occupations, in which supply typically (though not always and in every case) exceeds demand, finds a continuing expression in girls' aspirations (and thus potential reproduction in the future). If w e now also compare the occupations shown in Table 2 (spontaneous joblist) and Table 3 (most popular aspirations), it becomes immediately evident that gendered pictures of the working world (which themselves are closely linked with respondents' proximate worlds) are closely linked with gendered aspirations for one's own future job. Although the ranked order in which occupations appear in each of the two tables differs, nine out of ten of the jobs included are the same. Table 3: Occupational Choices: The first ten jobs in order of frequency Girls (N = 254)

f

1. S. S. Teacher 2. N.S. Teacher

40.0 38.0

Boys (N = 267)

f

1. Doctor 2. Car Mechanic

26.1 22.9

3. Gymnast

24.0

3. Gymnast

19.0

4. Doctor

20.6

4. Electrician

15.9

5. Policewoman

19.3

6. Lawyer

16.6

5. Policeman

14.6

7. Fashion Designer

13.3

6. Pilot

14.0

Psychologist 8. Hairdresser 9. Decorator Air Hostess 10. Archaeologist Nursery Nurse

13.3 12.06 9.3 9.3 8.06 8.06

Basketball player

15.9

S.S. Teacher

14.0

7. Army Officer

12.7

Lawyer 8. Electronics Engineer Computer Programmer 10. Civil Engineer

12.7 11.4 11.4 7.0

Non-comissioned Officer

7.0

Mechanic/Electrician

7.0

The popularity of gymnast as an aspiration for both girls and boys may well be a specifically Greek phenomenon, arising from longstanding cultural values based upon Greek historical image. Many sports, however remain associated with one gender rather than the other, so that basketball is, for Greeks at least, obviously a male-typed sport. Its current popularity - which may well be shared in other western cultures at present - is probably related to the international promotion of US star basketball personalities in youth-oriented mass media and advertising. Of particular interest, however, is that police officer appears as the fifth most frequently mentioned aspiration for both sexes. Visual

Gendered Youth Transitions in Northern Greece: Between Tradition and Modernity

217

mass media may well play a role here too, in that large number of TV police series (mainly imports) portray police officers as heroes, and latterly as heroines, too. But additionally, women police officers in uniform symbolise a power and authority in combination with their traditional 'care and support' function. It is the combination of gendered attributes and functions which is attractive to young women, who typically wish to transcend the constraints of conventional roles and activities but not to discard their positive aspects in doing so. In terms of practical strategies, however, the occupation of police officer is neither regarded as a manual job nor does it require a university degree. This, too, offers potential advantages to girls as well as boys. Overall, and not just for the most popular aspirations, the girls in this study mainly choose professions which require a university education. Their choices are concentrated towards self-employed professions (doctor, lawyer) and the traditionally femaledominated teaching profession. Clerical occupations which do not require higher education, come third in their line of preference (secretary, sales girl). Boys, on the other hand, more frequently select occupations involved with sport and the arts, jobs requiring a specific technical skill and self-employed professions as above. Despite their ambitious aspirations, girls choose work which is considered typically female-typed and is female-staffed; they are very likely to aspire to jobs requiring high educational qualifications. In Greece, the decision made by both girls and boys to follow higher education has to do with a more general tendency in Greek society to urge the younger generation towards a university education and an 'office job', a tendency we talked about at the beginning of this paper. This tendency, in combination with the fact that girls get better grades at school as a rule, together with rejection of manual work, shapes the findings we have presented here. Girls and boys also give different reasons for their occupational choices. Both sexes simply write most frequently that they like the idea of a particular job, they think they can do it (i.e. have the competence and personal qualities necessary), and that they find the job interesting. Beyond this, girls say they would like to provide services to society, that they have a love of children and that they value opportunities for human contract. Girls infrequently mention security, financial reasons, adventure, or a love of machines, which, in contrast, are the main reasons mentioned by the boys. These important differences between girls and boys are rooted in the different way in which they see their futures. If one excludes those personal reasons noted above which come up with the same frequency in both genders, it becomes clear that the girls' motives for choosing their future employment have to do with characteristics which are typically connected to women and are related to specific kinds of jobs. It is obvious that girls do not consider themselves responsible for being the breadwinners of their future family. So, for example, in choosing a high status profession (e.g. doctor, lawyer) or a typically male job (e.g. policeman), girls say that they choose these jobs because they want to offer their services to humanity, to help society or to come into contact with people. Boys who aspire to these occupations write that they do so because they ensure a high salary, career prospects, high profit and professional security. The fear of unemployment and the need

218

K. Deliyanni-Kouimtzi and R. Ziogou

for financial security do not seem to affect the girls, who tend to look at their future profession with a romantic and idealistic attitude. These differences reflect the different social spheres women and men inhabit, specifically in the framework of the gendered division of labour. By placing themselves in the sphere of reproduction, with the role of mother and wife playing a major part, women learn to consider the sphere of production as an area alien to them, in that their basic responsibilities lie elsewhere. As a consequence, for the Greek teenage girls studied here, future employment is not always an immediate need and obligation, and they can approach it with a romantic outlook, as they have learned to believe that the husbandprovider will take care of the most important task of breadwinning for them and their children.

Conclusions Our study in Thessaloniki offers little evidence for the notion that gender divisions in employment and family life are on the brink of change and dissipation, and in this sense, it provides further confirmation of research findings from across Europe. Gender role practices may be changing in some ways, but they are certainly not noticeably doing so in terms of occupational aspirations, expectations and destinations. Our study underlines that knowledge and interpretations of the occupational structure and the labour market are derived, as one would expect, from the observations and experiences to which children and young people have been exposed in their families, neighbourhoods, schools and cultural contexts. These offer, by and large, pictures of gendered opportunity limitation and constraint, most particularly in the case of young women, who thereby learn, in the first instance, social and cultural definitions of adult women's roles. When Greek girls come to formulate occupational aspirations, they fluctuate between two poles: highly qualified professions at one end, office work, services and fashion at the other. Girls' strong commitment to the career professions requiring university degrees has to be qualified by the fact that, in practice, such aspirations remain focused on traditionally female-typed occupations (such as teaching) or, at least, on types of work that can be readily redefined as suitable for women (such as medicine). Girls rarely aspire to be professional engineers, for example. Their reasons for their choices also emphasise criteria that are traditionally feminine in quality: service, caring, social contact. These incipient contradictions in girls' orientations create the impression that they are split between resistance and accommodation, wavering between the two: educational participation and achievement can work against the reproduction of gender divisions (at least potentially), whereas occupational aspirations and destinations continue to confirm traditional gendered roles and tasks. The peculiar sharpness of their dilemma can be related to the specificities of the Greek cultural context. Young people of both sexes are insistently encouraged to value academic achievement and to continue their education for as long as possible. Young Greek women are additionally subject to a normative role

Gendered Youth Transitions in Northern Greece: Between Tradition and Modernity

219

model of the 'correct female teenager', who is serious-minded, well-mannered, obedient and a good student (Deliyanni-Kouimtzi 1992b). In this sense, high level educational participation and achievement is not, in the Greek context, to be understood on its own in terms of resistance to and emancipation from traditional sex roles and gender divisions. It needs rather to be placed in a broader context, specifically, to be accompanied by nonstereotypical occupational aspirations and/or distancing from traditional norms and values in relation to sex roles in general. Nevertheless, many of these girls will go on to adult life facing a serious contradiction which arises from conflicting social demands. On the one hand, they are directed to higher education, but on the other hand, they receive no encouragement or approval which frees them from the stereotypical role of mother and wife. These young women will have to face the results of this contradiction later on, when, after completing their university studies, they will come face to face with a harsh reality, according to which, to remind ourselves of the extract with which we began this chapter, it will not be possible to be a famous doctor if they have "to do all the things that a good housewife should do". Our conclusion could be characterised as especially pessimistic as far as Greek society and women's lives are concerned; however, we do not think that the above views represent fully contemporary reality. For example, the fact that many girls, even at an early stage, when they are very far from the responsibility of realistic occupational decisions, 'comfortably' select ambitious occupational aspirations in sectors that only a generation ago were accessible only to men shows the potential for their more powerful presence in the labour market in the future. By the same measure, the decisiveness with which these same girls state that they choose the particular professions because "they just like it" or because "they are capable", is an indication that the new generation of women are ready to take their lives into their hands to a larger extent than in the past. These social changes, even if they are still few and happen slowly, permit us to close on a note of optimism for the future.

Contradictions of Modem Childhood Within and Outside School Ulf Preuss-Lausitz

Research on childhood and schooling: two strange and disconnected worlds Research on childhood is expanding. It is an ever-increasing market. Through to the mid1970s, childhood research was primarily historically oriented. Since then, and especially in the pre-1990 FRG, it has shifted its focus towards the contemporary, day-to-day life of children under the conditions of a modernised 'risk society' (Beck 1986). At present, it is the negative aspects of contemporary childhood that receive the most research attention: the ruin and disintegration (decline) of family, the loss of sisters and brothers, the negative influence of TV, the loss of free life in the streets of towns and in the country, 'second hand' experience (mediated experience), i.e. the loss of the direct, physical encounter of the real world, and so on. Rarely are the chances of modern childhood in western Europe the focus of interest: more individuality, more autonomy (independence), more richness, less obligation to work, more educational liberality in family, more sexual freedom, and so on. Study of childhood itself and conditions of today's children and youth should, of course, connect both: the dangers and the chances. Theoretically, we should think in terms of contradictions and polarities, of conflicts and balances: this is where the productive development of children takes its starting point. Furthermore, this would also be helpful for the public discussion about childhood and youth. Research on childhood during the last decade has, in addition, almost entirely ignored a central part of the everyday life of children: the school. In German childhood research, school as a place of experience does not exist. Effectively, childhood research is research about family, leisure-time and peer-group life. This means it has ignored the most important institution after the family, an institution which is often more durable than are some families. Nearly all young people in Germany attend school until the age of 18, more than a third obtains the Abitur (higher secondary education leaving certificate) and wants to go to the university. Every 6-year-old child knows that he or she will attend school every morning for at least ten years. That provides more internal security and confidence than some families can give. Yet the real socialisation effect of schooling remains, to a large extent, unknown. The low profile of school in childhood research is all the more surprising given its increasing importance. I see three central meanings of school for the children. Firstly, they

222

U. Preuss-Lausitz

know, that the certificates acquired in the 'achievement-oriented society' are indispensable conditions for later social and economical chances. Secondly, they experience school as a most important place where they can find friends and other social relationships (Czerwenka et. al. 1990). Last but not least, school seems to be experienced as a place where social skills such as tolerance, empathy and understanding of different cultural behaviour patterns are learned (Graudenz and Randoll 1993). We must therefore conclude that school is now, objectively and subjectively the most important social 'glue' for upcoming generations in an individualistic and pluralistic society. Childhood research that ignores schooling experiences amputates childhood in a very important dimension.

School research and childhood Childhood research clearly has its deficits - but so does school research. School research inquires about the 'good school', about the effectivity of school, about the attractiveness for the parents and for the 'consumer' in economy. A great deal of money is paid to interview parents and adults in general (for example, Institut fur Schulentwicklung Dortmund surveys, Rolff 1980-1994). Much effort has been devoted to exploring the extent and dimensions of gender-based inequalities in educational structure and process. And there are interesting studies about the improvement of teaching and learning methods, for example 'learning by doing', open education, and architectural renewal of schools in order to make them sites of active learning, adventure, and home atmosphere (Gohlich 1993). And yet, we but speculate on what students do today at school, what they want, what they detest. German school research is research about teaching/learning methods, normally seeking to improve the effectiveness of school lessons, but it does not ask what the children of the consumer and crisis society experience at school (Preuss-Lausitz et al. 1983). This state of affairs must be remedied: we need studies of children and young people as pupils and students, and for this to become a main stream of school research. Further, it is, in my view, important to integrate the presently separate fields of childhood research and school research. This would include not only greater interchange at theoretical and empirical level of scholarly debate, but also a measure of institutional integration between groups and research centres. Whilst the need for such integration is evident in Germany, there is little doubt that it applies to other European countries too.

The public image of the 'depraved' child in the 'depraved' school: myths dominate realities Childhood research should ask why the myth of the 'bad child1 and at the same time the myth of the 'bad school' dominate public opinion in the 1990s. The modern child is the

Contradictions of Modern Childhood Within and Outside School

223

bad child. He is violent. Bearing weapons, he strikes unpredictably. He is disoriented. He is unfriendly towards foreigners. He sits in front of the TV and eats potato crisps. He is egoistic, wants to buy all the things his friends have, too, and does not care about other people. He has no moral values. He does not believe adults - and this not only in the (eastern German) new federal states. The "bad school' has "bad teachers'. Either they are as eastern German teachers - disoriented, or they are - as western German teachers part of the '68-generation revolt and therefore without normative and educational clarity. They are helpless in the face of kids' violence, avoiding the educational responsibility, going on holidays as often as they can - as far as possible. Both images, the image of the bad child and of the bad school and teacher, are myths which have little to do with realities. They nevertheless form the basis of action in politics and the mass media. The solution, in my view, is to offer precise empirical studies about schools, pupils and schooling.

Contradictions between contemporary childhood and contemporary schooling Research that ties together school and childhood has to take contradictions, conflicts, ambivalences and balances as starting points. These define the extra-curricular and school experience of children and young people. The most important contradictions are, in my view, these: - between modem so called negotiation-education (Buchner 1983) within the modern family and traditional so called command-education at school ("Open page 20 in your English book and translate ...!"); - between direct learning by unplanned experiences out of school and customary planned and systematical learning at school; - between independence/autonomy outside school (even for children) and subordination/dependence in school; - between the necessity of and the chance for self-control in private life and the external control of achievement and social interaction exercised by teachers; - between the extra-curricular plurality and individualism and homogeneous groups/streams at school (classes that have the same age, the same speed of learning, the same achievement); - between the extra-curricular 'holistic' life and the circumscribed world of the school, primarily reduced to cognitive concentration and ignoring social needs; - between growing up in multicultural and multi-ethnic contexts and school's imposition of the 'same' curriculum for all pupils (particularly evident in the German tradition of A llgemeinbildung);

224

U. Preuss-Lausitz

- and last but not least, in eastern Germany: between the political and moral break down, including within families, and the fact that teachers who had to instruct socialist thinking now have to teach western democratic positions. (What shall the kids believe now?). Schools' responses to these contradictions There is no doubt, in my mind, that many teachers are aware of these contradictions between school and modern childhood. The conflicts they generate will often be regarded as deviance, as bad habits of the children: kids seem no longer to be capable of concentrating on learning, on social interaction, on knowing how to behave - with the result that teachers reinforce the negative public image of youth with their own interpretation of the girls and boys at school. On the other hand, for at least a decade, efforts have been made to reduce these contradictions, to find a new balance, by looking for new teaching and learning methods: school tries to integrate extra-curricular experiences and life-styles. School wants to be experienced like leisure-time and family, like a department store, like a club with friendly coaches. These modernisation strategies include:

- changing the rooms in school (especially in primary school) into a second home (Gdhlich 1993); - reformed communication between students and teachers based more on partnership; - modified style of dress for teachers (more relaxed and casual); - acceptance of ordinary, in part: vulgar language; - increasing adoption of self-regulated learning (for example self-control cards in mathematics andforeign languages) - a shift from giving the orders to forms of negotiation and discussion; - integration of children's normal life experiences into school (especially in primary school, i.e., with free writing in the Freinet tradition; in secondary school i.e., through individual consultation with teachers and psychologists); - acceptance of some forms of pluralism, differentiation in learning speed, in curricular interests, in special activities etc.; - simulation of direct experience (i.e., in the school garden, or in a theatre project); - integration of computers to combine the high private computer-motivation with school learning. In addition to these adaption strategies there are attempts to insulate school life experience from everyday life, to make it distinct from everyday life. These include:

Contradictions of Modern Childhood Within and Outside School

225

- against the experience of violence and anxiety, school shall be a site of non-violence and convey a sense of security; - against immobility in front of the TV, school implants direct physical work and exercise, in the laboratory, in the project, in the experiment, in sports etc.; - against persisting social disadvantage school tries to support those children particularly affected; - against the traditional social role of men and women school encourages girls, especially in maths and natural sciences; - against the separation of disabled children, school begins to integrate (mainstreaming). There are other such 'compensatory' attempts to modernise school as an 'opposite world' (in the sense of Rousseau), and they deserve much more research attention than they have received hitherto.

The modernisation of childhood and the essence of school: education Those schools, in Germany and elsewhere in Europe, that attempt to reduce the discrepancy between the extra-curricular school experiences of today's children will presumably have more learning and educative success. That is the reason why, in many countries, the theories and practical ideas of historic 'reform pedagogy' (especially Montessori, Freinet, Dewey, Kerschensteiner, Steiner, Key) are presently so attractive. School research and childhood research should ask whether school, integrating these forms of present childhood experience, really supports the emancipation of youngsters or whether it is merely more functional in the Durkheimian sense. But modernisation of school as an adaption to modern childhood does not eliminate the central purpose of schooling. School has to educate, and that means self-directed involvement with the themes of the school curriculum. This is connected with effort In part, instruction has to organise learning in systematically structured steps, for example in grammar or in aspects of physics or mathematics. In addition, school and instruction are always organised collectively, which means learning, though an individual process, occurs in a group context. Therefore, individualism and pluralism are always circumscribed at school. Also negotiation (instead of ordering) can be accepted only in part. Equally, the social needs of the peer group have a merely secondary importance during the school day. In other words, there are indissoluble contradictions between school structure and a child's experience, even more so in the modern crisis society. School must indeed confront the demands for pedagogical, curricular and architectural modernisation, but it cannot hope to put an ultimate end to all discrepancies between modem childhood, youth and school - for example, by instituting the 'good school' for

226

U. Preuss-Lausitz

the 'good children'. Hence, school is in an everlasting, endless contradiction: it has to try to reduce the discrepancies, because they put a heavy strain on school learning. At the same time, it is compelled to accept but a partial realisation of its efforts to do so. Education in the school context is in conflict with everyday life and the socialisation outside school.

Conservative and progressive responses to the pluralisation of schooling The most important experience of today's children and young people is the pluralism of ways of life: varying family forms, varying ethnic cultures, varying economic and social opportunities, varying sexual orientations etc. We can identify two kinds of responses to pluralism as this relates to schooling. The conservative answer to pluralism More and more children are sent to private schools which are, in fact, selective along social, religious or ethnic lines: new Christian or Jewish schools, the 'Steiner Schools'. In the USA there are new colleges only for girls or for black people etc. In addition, there are more and more schools with special profiles, some at primary level, for example those offering two languages for all children (for example French, English, Russian, Spanish). Of course, that's good for middle class kids who want to make a career in the coming united Europe. We have new secondary schools with a special profile in sports, music, ballet etc. In the new East German schools we continue in this way the former early achievement-selection for the planned vocational sector. If conservatism means preferring early selection, then it is also a characteristic of some 'progressive' or rather 'left' positions. The result of school differentiation in religion, belief, achievement or special profiles is in every case an anti-pluralistic selection, the exclusion of other children. For example you seldom find migrant workers' children in the German Steiner (Waldorf) schools. Young people from Muslim families - in Germany, usually of Turkish origin - are highly unlikely to be found in private schools linked with Christian churches. In the school with a special sport profile, there is a school climate hostile to the fat, unathletic kid - he or she would be an outcast. Of course, many of these children have little contact with those different from themselves outside school either. But school could be the singular locality where they meet and understand each other. Separation in school is a great danger, wherever in Europe it occurs. How can they learn tolerance if they do not experience each other in concrete situations? The progressive answer to pluralism Fortunately, this response is more positive. 'Progressive pluralism' seeks to integrate all children in one school, in one room, but to differentiate within the learning group. Integration policies, or mainstreaming, has gained a lot of ground over the past fifteen

Contradictions of Modern Childhood Within and Outside School

227

years or so. It is particularly evident in the case of special needs, whether in the USA or in western Europe. In the FRG, former policies of segregating migrant workers' children in separate classes have increasingly given way to integration policies and strategies, although residential segregation combined with neighbourhood school and parental choice can still lead to a polarisation of pupil profiles. In other words, in practice, some schools are either almost wholly indigenous German or 'migrant worker' populated. Those who support this position think that the plurality of children is so broad that, on the basis of learning theories and political claims, it is better not to assume a homogeneous learning group but rather to expect a pluralistic crowd of 20 or 30 kids and youngsters. Pluralism forces the abandonment of a belief in homogeneous learning groups which goes back to the days of Comenius. Pluralism brings opportunity to the school by the very fact that such children are educated together. The precondition is that the specialities, the individualisms, the profiles are all catered for within one school, and not separated into different classes, buildings, and systems. So the modernisation of childhood under conditions of pluralism justifies the common school in a new manner: a common school, but no homogeneous curriculum for all. In the progressive version of pluralism, education will be common and different at the same time.

Conclusions for childhood research in relation to schooling What does all this mean for research? The most important consequences are, in my view, the following: - childhood research and school research would benefit from much greater integration; - school research should be conceptualised around the exigencies of modernisation processes, which entails starting from contradictions and pluralism; - we should seek to understand and analyse those dimensions of the modernisation of schooling that foster education and personal development for a democratic society, specifically: we have to support tolerance and variety; - as far as teaching/learning is concerned, we have to investigate how variety within the community (Preuss-Lausitz 1993) can be genuinely practised, reflecting the pluralism of life outside school within school - in its structures, climate and educative processes - but without abandoning the classical aims of school; - we should seek empirical evidence on whether the 'classical' sociological group differences (boys/girls, indigenous/foreigners, special needs/non-special needs, middle class/lower class etc.) are still useful divisions in school and childhood research or whether it is more profitable to look for further grouping within these groups to describe the present great variety; - childhood research and school research should, above all, be organised as a research with and about pupils and students under conditions of contradictory pluralism in Europe.

Youth Culture in Transition to Post-Modernity: Finland Jaana Làhteenmaa

The nature of the cultural situation in which post-industrial western societies find themselves is the subject of considerable discussion at present. Some speak about a 'new cultural situation', some about 'late modernity' or even 'post-modernity'. There is a certain difference between these discourses: especially those who use the term 'post-modernity' mean to underline a fundamental change that marks the passing of the 'modern era': great narratives are dead and cultural signs signify nothing but themselves (Arppe 1986). Those taking a less radical view of contemporary cultural change are more likely to use terms such as 'new cultural situation' (Ziehe 1982) or 'late modernity' (Fornas and Boethius 1990). Such commentators focus more specifically on phenomena such as the collapse of authorities and the erosion of established traditions which herald the emergence of a 'both-and' mentality as opposed to the 'either-or' mentality typical of modernist thinking (Jallinoja 1991). However, whatever position is adopted in this debate, the fact remains that discussion has, for the most part, remained at a philosophical or theoretical sociological level. Very little empirical evidence has been offered in support of these speculations. This contribution does not pretend to solve the question of whether we live in late modern postmodern or, a new kind of modern culture. Instead, it presents and considers some empirical material - including from my own research - about contemporary Finnish youth culture from the point of view of the debate over post-modernity. What does this material have to tell us that would be useful in grounding these theoretical discussions?

Youth and the new cultural situation Thomas Ziehe (op. cit.) was one of the first to analyse the consequences of the 'new cultural situation' for the young. He identified six 'disturbances' of traditional culture which have significant, far-reaching implications for young people's lives, in particular, for those growing up in the 1980s western/northern European countries: the erosion of the meaning of the Christian religion; changes in the sexual morals and behaviours; the erosion of generationally differentiated roles; the problematisation of established gender roles and positions of social authority; and loosening of traditional work ethics.

230

J. Lahteenmaa

If we relate these six 'disturbances' to Finnish youth culture - especially in metropolitan and urban Finland - it would appear that not all have a necessary relevance in that context. Firstly, against a background of liberalism in this respect, the last two decades have seen minimal changes in Finnish sexual morals and behaviour (Kontula and HaavioMannila 1993). Secondly, commitment to the work ethic amongst young Finns remains strong (Siurala 1991a). Both of these features may well reflect specificities of Finnish cultural traditions and practices, but they are not the focus of this contribution and are therefore not considered further here. Furthermore, in my view, the erosion of generationally differentiated roles and changing attitudes towards 'authorities' are closely linked trends. After all, in the past, the core authority figures for young people were all older adults: parents, teachers and priests. These two disturbances are thus considered here together as one and the same phenomenon. Adult authority figures have been, of course, most frequently men: traditionally, we are speaking of societies ruled by the fathers, adult men. The erosion of traditional gender roles is, then, a disturbance that has relevance for analysing contemporary youth culture in Finland. Finally, the erosion of the meaning and status of Christianity is part of one of the core aspects of posited postmodern culture: the disappearance of grand narratives that explain and make sense of human life and social history. Essentially, all the disturbances listed by Ziehe (op. cit.) are rooted in the erosion of traditions of one kind or another - including the ways in which young people relate to the object world beyond themselves. In this context, we might consider, for example, young people's relationships to consumer goods as objects of the outer world, which, par excellence, represent the transformation from a production to a consumer society (Sulkunen 1994). Relationships to consumer goods are also analytically interesting in that, when marked by lack of self-control, they readily assume problematic dimensions. The erosion of traditional forms and positions of authority implies, of course, that external controls must be replaced by inner controls. For a variety of reasons, many young people may not have acquired competence in this respect. The logical consequence, in contemporary consumer society, is that addictive relationships to objects, i.e. goods, especially those that produce immediate and direct pleasure, become more likely and more widespread. Addiction is repetitive behaviour that is not supported by tradition (Giddens 1994). Hence it is quite possible to suppose that young people's relationships to consumer goods may, given the 'new cultural situation' under discussion here, become addictive. Is there evidence to support this notion? Is there evidence, beyond this, of the erosion of tradition in itself, and what are the consequences for youth culture? Taken together, all the trends noted above suggest that collective norms and values about how one should live and conduct oneself, what are appropriate and desirable tastes and lifestyles, and so on, are weakening (Gergen 1991). 'Edges' become indistinct, blurred and fluid, distinctions and positionings less ultimately significant, producing the 'both-and' ethos mentioned earlier. Leaving the content of young people's response to one side for a moment, there are three possible varieties of the form of their response to the challenges posed by the 'new cultural situation': adaptation

Youth Culture in Transition to Post-Modernity: Finland

231

(positive competence); affectation (confusion); and aggression (negative competence). In the sections that follow, I want to look at the content of young people's responses in relation to three axes of disturbance: erosion of authority/tradition, erosion of grand narratives, and erosion of gender roles.

The erosion of authority and tradition In Ziehe's formulation, the 'new cultural situation' demands greater self-control and sublimation of libidinal impulse in that the external controls represented and exercised by authority and tradition have disintegrated. In Finland a clear change in the status of adult authorities and breakup of traditions took place at the end of the 1960s, when great numbers of Finns moved from the countryside to urban areas, especially to the Helsinki metropolitan area. Criminality - especially violence, which sometimes took the form of cruel gang fights - and drinking increased significantly among Finnish youth at this time. A new suburban culture was substituted for traditional village culture and its mechanisms of social control. The urbanisation of Finland was an extremely rapid affair compared with most other European countries (Siurala 1993). Rates of violence and crime - except arson and crimes connected with selling drugs - have not increased significantly among Finnish youth since this time. In other words, this may have been an initial indicator of rapid modernisation and the dissolution of traditional forms of social control. Instead, we now register the collapse of traditional authorities in schooling. Children and young people no longer accept teachers' authority to be self-evident. On the contrary, the incidence of pupil-initiated disturbances in the classroom, including violence towards teachers, has risen noticeably. There are, however, gender differences here. If the ability for self-control is the underlying problematic, then it seems clear that girls are more competent than boys, generally speaking. Not only do girls do better at school than boys in terms of formal achievement, but they are also less likely to be deemed as 'problem-pupils'. This is particularly so in the case of middle class girls. As widely discussed in the literature on gender socialisation, girls are particularly subject to the expectation that they control themselves and suppress hedonistic impulse, leading to what might be termed a 'responsible-rational' disposition (Nare and Lahteenmaa 1992). Boys and young men, on the other hand, seem to have more difficulty in responding to the challenges posed by the 'new cultural situation': it is they who are the problem pupils at school, they who are most likely to be living 'on the margins' in the cities who have drink and drug problems, who are involved in criminal activities, and so on. At the same time, recent years have witnessed an upswing in the incidence of young women at risk in similar kinds of ways; these problems are not exclusively male, in other words. It may be that the erosion of gender roles, to which we turn attention further below, is playing some part in these developments. In relation to the problem of addiction - noted earlier - we have only fragmentary empirical material available on young people's general patterns of

232

J. LShteenmaa

consumption in Finland. As elsewhere, however, the incidence of eating disorders (anorexia, bulimia) has, on all accounts, risen, especially amongst girls and young women. These disorders are addictions of a paradoxical kind, in that they combine pleasure/revulsion, attraction/repulsion in the relationship between the self and the object being consumed (food). They are also disorders that are closely linked with compulsive attempts to exercise self-control, attempts which are either never successful or the results of which can never satisfy the demands made by the self upon itself. They represent, in effect, a self-defined failure to resist the impulse to consume in a world where consumption knows no bounds: individuals are expected to set their own limits, but against a background of continuing, often contradictory, expectations (for example, images of female bodily form). Alcohol and drug use and abuse has steadily increased amongst young people of both sexes, too, with the upward curve halted only temporarily in times of recession (for example, cigarette smoking among young people has declined somewhat in the early 1990s). Young people at risk in the kinds of ways noted here might be classified as having difficulties in responding to the 'new cultural situation' in relation to the erosion of authority and tradition. They may respond with confusion (and develop, for example, eating disorders or drug addiction), or they may respond with negative competence, i.e. adopting violent behaviours. One example of aggressive response is skinhead subculture, which has replaced normative authority structures and statutes with authoritarian ideologies (nationalism, neofascism) and hierarchies (paramilitarism) of its own. One interpretation of this almost exclusively male subculture is that those young men attracted to take part in it have problems with defining and maintaining a male gender identity that is not imbued with authority, i.e. the disintegration of the 'rule of the fathers' - to which they, in the past, would have expected to accede - has left a hiatus in the construction of male identity. Those whose personal and social resources do not positively support their search for a gendered self-identity appropriate to the 'new cultural situation' may, under specific circumstances, turn to violent masculinity as a (pseudo-) solution.

The erosion of grand narratives The term 'grand narratives' refers to overarching belief and ideological systems that lend meaning and purpose to life, that imbue what happens to people with 'sense'. The erosion of grand narratives refers to the decline in the force of such systems for the individual and the collectivity - whether we speak here of religion, communism, universalism, evolution, or similar theories. On a very concrete level the effects of this 'end' or 'disappearance' can be detected in research findings which for example show that parents in Helsinki no longer discuss much with their children such issues as politics, religion and values (Siurala 1991b). Instead of the grand narratives recounted by parents to their children in the past, today's young people have to build their worldviews from short, fragmentary "bits of texts'

Youth Culture in Transition to Post-Modernity: Finland

233

that exist, often enough, only in the world of signs and symbols - in a reality that they experience only indirectly, via media and hi-tech communications technology. This postmodern challenge demands that young people develop the ability to construct their own worldviews and to lend their own meanings to the information they access. This information may be fictional or factual: not only must young people be able to sort out the difference between the two, but they are beginning to learn that the boundaries between fiction and fact are both shifting and becoming less intrinsically significant. This implies, too, that some young people are either unable to 'codify' fiction or develop new ways of coping with 'the reality of fiction'. Nare (1992) has explored this phenomenon in the study of 'fictist youth culture', whose members identify themselves with fictional heroes (such as Superman) and create unrealistic omnipotence fantasies based on these 'unreal' identifications. It is plausible to suggest that this kind of subculture is connected with the erosion of grand narratives: 'fictists' come to believe in purely fictional quasigrand narratives and begin to live according to their standards. Fictist youth is inclined to suppose, for example, that they, too, can be rockstars or other kinds of heroes effortlessly, in a world in which they appear to themselves as omnipotent. Interestingly, 'fictists', too, are mainly boys; many of them live in a female-headed single parent family. Nare (ibid.) concludes that they, too, have difficulties in gender identity construction: they lack real adult male significant others (most especially, their father) and are thus prone to take recourse in unreal heroes. Whilst fictists may be another example of confused response to the challenge of postmodernity, skinheads and 'lifestyle skaters' are examples of aggressive response. Skinheads are ultra-traditionalistic, clinging onto the old grand narratives of nationalism, white or 'arian' supremacy and patriarchy. Whilst the origins of skinhead subculture may lie in the fashioning of a 'counter-narrative' to social democracy and universalism, which represented the established mainstream of social and political ideology in 1960s/1970s Finland, the increasing strength of Finnish skinhead subculture today my rather reflect, once more, that some groups of young men cannot live without a grand narrative that affirms their own superiority. My own study of Helsinki lifestyle skaters shows that these are young people who are totally committed to their 'hobby', to the extent that they give up everything else in life including going to school. They believe - unrealistically - that they can skate for the rest of their lives, becoming some kind of skating hero. In a way, lifestyle skaters are similar to fictists in that they build a grand narrative around their own (questionable) heroism. Their grand narrative does not rest at the level of fantasy, of false identification with fictional heroes, however: they actually do something - skate all the time! - in order to reach their dream. Lifestyle skaters demonstrate confusion and aggression; and they, too, are, almost without exception, boys. My proposal is, once more, that the psychological factor behind this aggressive defence of grand narratives, which in the case of fictists, skinheads and lifestyle skaters are built around male heroism in one way or another, is weak male identity on the individual level and the crisis of hegemonic masculinity on a more general level.

234

J. Láhteenmaa

The erosion of gender roles The assertion that contemporary gender roles and relations are marked by shifts, ambivalences and contradictions is unlikely to be regarded as contentious in the youth research community. Modern feminism from the 1960s onwards has resulted in successively more complex struggles for gender equality, in which particularistic and universalistic ideologies continue to jostle against each other and in which the weakening of unidimensional gender norms has offered girls and young women a widening range of options within which to construct their identities and lives. This expansion of options is by no means unproblematic in its implications for female subjectivities and lifestyles - in many ways, young women are faced with more complex decisionmaking than are young men, in that they are subject to highly contradictory expectations and demands. However, the general framework is a positively accented one: young women can see themselves as on the road to emancipation and greater self-actualisation. Boys and young men are more likely to see themselves in a situation of potential loss and disorientation: the patriarchal grand narrative is passé, but what might take its place, how can the vacuum be positively filled? Even where economic recession, in Finland as elsewhere, is currently producing a degree of 'roll back' - suggesting that women should return to their traditional roles to relieve pressure on the labour market and public expenditure on support services (such as childcare) - there is little doubt that broader, longer-term shifts towards androgyny and flexibilisation of the gendered division of labour will prevail. It is plausible to argue that male responses to the gender challenge of post-modernity as illustrated in the youth subculture examples offered above - are more likely to be confused and aggressive than positively adaptive. Indeed, given that girls and young women are not, by and large, represented in such subcultures and that they are demonstrating greater competence in a range of life fields (educational achievement, political attachment, sexual flexibilisation, life planning; Láhteenmaa and Siurala 1991), we might conclude that the 'new cultural situation' is one that might begin to turn the gender tables in favour of women as a social group and of femininity as a cultural complex. This new pattern is not to be understood as a reversal of hierarchical relationships between women and men or femininity and masculinity in their traditional sense. Rather, women and femininity would appear to be a more favourable position to adapt positively to contemporary demands for flexibility, autonomy and selfresponsibility. Post-modern human subjectivities may thus be more readily attuned to innovative combinations between femininity and androgyny than between masculinity and androgyny, for example. This returns us to the idea of the 'both-and' ethos of post-modernity noted at the outset of this chapter. This ethos responds to the increasing complexity of people's lives within a fluid and contradictory social and cultural world, in which 'fixed' norms and predictable behavioural patterns no longer make sense and may become simply counterproductive, since they cannot adapt readily to continuously changing circumstances. One simple indicator of the relevance of this ethos in understanding youth culture is the eclecticism of

Youth Culture in Transition to Post-Modernity: Finland

235

musical taste (Keskinen 1994) and the increasingly widespread practice of subcultural switching (Láhteenmaa 1991). Recent research (Náre and Lahteenmaa, op. cit.) indicates that, on the whole, it is girls rather than boys who are ready to adopt and practice a 'bothand' ethos. Girls are more numerous amongst subcultural switchers, for example. They combine genres in their musical, literature and media tastes, whereas boys' preferences are more unidimensional. Girls' greater adaptability and flexibility should not, after all, surprise us: they have long been socialised to take account of and balance out contradictory polarities, such as learning to be mothers-housewives and paid workers at the same time. In other words: it is girls, rather than boys, who are to be found in the vanguard of post-modernisation as cultural change. This does not imply that girls and young women never have difficulties of adaptation to the 'new cultural situation'. Eating disorders, which are much more common amongst girls, are an example of maladaptation - and perhaps can be seen as an example of overadaptation, in which the 'both-and' ethos is carried too far (as in the case of the bulimic eat/vomit/eat/vomit/eat ... syndrome). Boys and young men, on the other hand, are more likely to engage in a form of aggressive retreat, i.e., a refusal to adopt a 'both-and' ethos. Skinheads and lifestyle skaters, for example, represent a totalistic 'either-or' ethos in which rules and behaviours are clearly set and followed, irrespective of their relationships to realities and reasonabilities. In conclusion, it is clear that young people's responses to the challenges posed by modernity can take a variety of positive and negative forms at psychological, social and cultural levels. In this discussion, I have not considered, for example, the dynamics of response over time. Responses that appear, and very possibly are, positively adaptive for the present (for example, hip-hoppers, or simply high-achieving schoolgirls), may prove less positive later on in life, when different kinds of adaptations and competencies become more important. Hip-hoppers, for example, develop sophisticated semiotic skills, i.e. encoding, decoding and recontextualising signs and symbols, which may be very useful indeed in learning to analyse culture critically. But what happens when the world of signs meets up with the demands of the adult 'real world'? Similarly, high-achieving schoolgirls are responding admirably to the demands made upon young people to acquire the qualifications and skills that are required by highly advanced economies. But what happens when they are confronted with continuing inequalities of opportunity in the labour market, despite equal or better levels of qualifications? Youth cultural studies need to take these kinds of questions into account, for youth cultures and subcultures cannot, ultimately, be separated from their social and political contexts.

Childhood and Poverty: from the Children's Point of View Angelo

Saporiti

Poverty is a life circumstance affecting individuals irrespective of their age and sex, albeit to a different extent. In principle no one, whatever his/her age and sex, can be assured once and for all of not falling into poverty in his/her life. And yet, in social research and policy children seem to be immune from poverty: we count poor families, young adults, adults and elderly, but not poor children - barring the most sensational cases, when children's poverty is such to draw the attention of the mass media. This means that we speak of poverty among children but only through the medium of a third party. Children suffer from poverty because their parents are in poverty: we generally speak of children belonging to families in poverty, having parents in poverty. That is, we convey to children an attribute of their parents. Beyond this, at least as far as official as well as unofficial statistics are concerned, they do not appear to be poor at all. To get to the roots of this state of affairs - which is not only an Italian issue - we have firstly to take into account the more general question of the invisibility of children. Sociologically, children are denied the status of personhood, the acknowledgement of their constructiveness as social actors. Likewise, childhood is not recognised as a social status - that is, a social standing in a system of social relationships playing its own role in the organisation of the society, and having certain rights and duties expressed by rules. This contribution seeks to link childhood and poverty together explicitly. It has thereby a two-fold purpose. Firstly, to consider what empirical evidence supports the thesis that children do not yet enjoy full membership in society. Secondly, to identify the key themes that must be addressed if this state of affairs is to be remedied, with particular attention to the issue of poverty. Therefore, after a brief introduction on the general theme of poverty the chapter opens with an examination of the scanty information available about children's poverty, followed by a critical description of the ways in which statistical data in this area are collected and organised. The discussion then introduces the concept of "childhood" as a key element in analysing and understanding poverty among children. The paper concludes with a consideration of both sociological and policy-related questions posed by the theme of childhood and poverty.

238

A. Saporiti

Some remarks on poverty studies and research In the history of sociological thought and social research the theme of poverty has a longstanding and authoritative tradition, dating back to the coming of industrial society. Till then, poverty was out of the domain of scientific knowledge, being mainly considered either a calamity, a punishment for idleness and indolence, or a natural phenomenon. The coming of industrial society and the rise of the working class placed poverty on the agenda of both public authorities and social scholars. Engels, Mayhew, Booth and Rowntree are the outstanding founders of a long tradition not yet exhausted or forgotten, and Philip Townsend is surely the most representative continuer of a such tradition. This does not mean, however, that we now dispose of a well established and definitive corpus of knowledge on the subject. The debate on poverty, its nature, its causes and consequences is still alive. The end of the illusion that the affluent societies would have once and for all eradicated poverty; the paradoxical but empirical experience that increasing poverty is an unexpected fellow-traveller of increasing levels of well-being - a phenomenon already pointed out by Alexis de Tocqueville in 1835 (on this point see Room, Lawson and Laczko 1989); the increasing dualism between the affluent western countries and a great part of the Third World; the recurring economic crises in industrialised countries and, last but not least, the crisis of the welfare state: all these events have compelled social scientists, economists, politicians and policy-makers to rethink the phenomenon of poverty and its place in contemporary societies - be they industrial or developing societies. Of course, I do not intend to discuss or simply to present the state of things on poverty analysis and research. To provide the main core of my paper with a general background, I shall limit myself to draw up a short list of the main points surrounding the present discussion on poverty in industrial societies. To this end there are at least three main points I would like to underline, and which are instrumental to the main body of my paper: a) the roots of poverty; b) how to define the concept of poverty; and c) how to measure it. As to the first point, the opposition between the 'structural' and the 'cultural' explanations of poverty is not at all over. The 'blaming the victim' thesis, according to which poverty is mainly attributable to values and cultural patterns of behaviour deviant from the dominant ones, is probably gaining new support in times in which the fiscal crisis of the welfare states nourishes the claim that the welfare state era is past. On the other hand, the social consequences of the recurring economic crises characterising the capitalist world during the last twenty years seem strongly to back the thesis that poverty is a structural phenomenon, that is a phenomenon stemming from the very same socioeconomic structure of market societies - the 'discovery' that unemployment is a relevant factor in poverty is just a point in case. A second point at the centre of the discussion concerns the very definition of the concept of poverty. Up to the early 1940s, poverty was conceptualised as "... the minimum sum [that is, earnings or income] on which physical efficiency could be

Childhood and Poverty: from the Children's Point of View

239

maintained. It was a standard of subsistence rather than living" (Rowntree 1941, quoted in Holman 1978, 7). As such subsistence poverty was an 'absolute poverty' involving no comparison between people belonging to different strata of the population. It was rather a comparison between people and what was considered as an objective subsistence yardstick. Later on, the inadequacies of an absolute concept of poverty (which for instance, does not take into account that human beings are moulded by psychological, social and cultural factors as well as by physical ones), especially vis a vis the increasing living standards of the western world, have contributed to the formulation of the concept of 'relative poverty': From this perspective, poverty is not identified by a fixed subsistence level but in relation to the average living conditions of a given society. Accordingly, the poor are those whose incomes are considered too far removed from the rest of the society in which they live that is, the poor are identified in relation to other people. This approach inevitably leads both to conceive poverty in terms of'relative deprivation' (Townsend 1979), and to place it in the sphere of 'social inequality': relative poverty is a living condition within a wider network of social relationships, that is, of the inequalities characterising a given society in a given historical period. Even though this point of view has gained much ground with respect to the subsistence conception, it has to face a new approach to the poverty phenomenon. The coming of 'post-industrial' society has in fact produced an increasing interest in the so called 'new poverty' - that is, poverty forms related both to 'social discomfort' and to 'post-materialistic' needs. It is not at all easy to distinguish clearly between these concepts. Even though they are designed to indicate different aspects and forms of poverty, as a matter of fact they are often overlapping. Without entering into details (Ardigo 1993; Sarpellon 1993), I would only to point out that the stress on the 'new poverty', as well as on the 'relative' conception, risks putting material poverty in the shade. It is true that in Western countries extreme or absolute poverty has been confined to a tiny fraction of the population. But it is equally true that: a) poverty has not at all disappeared; b) on the contrary, because of the recurring economic crises it has probably increased, involving not only the traditional poor wretch but also new and 'normal' social subjects. Such a kind of remark has been clearly stated by Sen (1983, 1985). Coming to the third of my points, time and space allow me just a few words. Measuring poverty depends of course upon the very same conception of the phenomenon. In general, the poverty measurement process involves many considerations and decisions. First, to establish as clearly as possible what is meant by the concept of poverty; second, to find the proper indicators of the concept; third, to fix a poverty threshold; fourth, and finally - as to the methodological aspects of poverty measurement - counting the poor. This process is not so easy to go along with as it could prima facie appear. Just to mention a few of the difficulties, the following issues are still open to discussion: a) the validity of economic measures of poverty; b) the correlation between economic and other dimensions of poverty; c) the unit of count (should we count poor individuals, poor families or poor households?); and, finally, d) the relationships between 'subjective' and

240

A. Saporiti

'objective' measures of poverty - from a 'social account' and social policy point of view, poverty and the poor are defined and identified by policy-makers and administrators (with the help of social scientists, at times). If poverty really has to do with relative deprivation, we should also take into account how people evaluate themselves in terms of other people and what happens around them. The last two issues are especially relevant to my thesis on children and poverty. I hope this connection will come out throughout the rest of the paper to justify this short excursus on poverty.

Where are poor children ? Since the late 1970s poverty among children has increasingly drawn the attention of the sociological community and among social policy analysts. A poverty revival - mainly attributable to the negative business cycles of the mid-1970s and 1980s, changes in the composition of poor, and the effects of public policies on the distribution of poverty these kinds of developments brought children's poverty and well-being back onto the agenda. It is now widely recognised that the post-war period in Western Europe (1950s 1970s) was a kind of'golden age' (Cornia 1990, 3) of social and economic development, which brought decreasing poverty in general and raised children's well-being. From the early 1970s, however, poverty among children has once more been on the rise. The (still scanty) evidence on children's poverty suffices "to point to a situation in which child poverty is rising - at times dramatically - or declining (...) slowly" (Cornia 1990, 30; Bradshaw 1990; Bradshaw et al. 1993, Chart 1.1; Danziger 1989). However, trends in children's poverty and living conditions are not so easy to 'catch' empirically as the above statement would suggest. Though there is a clear feeling as well as some evidence that the number of poor children has increased during the last two decades, systematic and comprehensive data on the incidence of poverty among the child population in Europe is scanty. (This it not the case in the USA, for example). In my view, this lack of information can be traced back to a societal attitude that denies both children and childhood their own identity, both conceptually and socially. We return to this problem subsequently, but begin here with a review of the evidence that is available on children's poverty, taking Italy - my own country - as the starting point. Italian poverty studies that refer to the child population are almost non-existent. Since early 1984 a governmentally appointed Research Commission on Poverty and Marginalisation has been at work. In its Second Report on Poverty in Italy (published in 1992), the Commission produced detailed estimates of poverty diffusion and composition. None of them concerns children. Whilst up to fifty different family types are distinguished in the statistical tabulations (see Commissione d'indagine e sulla povertà ... 1992, Table 2.1, 56 - 7), the word 'children' appears in none of them. Nor are the kinds of family characteristics usually associated with children's poverty anywhere mentioned. Poor children do not seem to exist at all as far as the report is concerned.

241

Childhood and Poverty: from the Children's Point of View

The National

Council on the Problems

of Minors

(appointed in 1985) has produced t w o

interesting and useful reports on the living conditions of the population aged 0-17, ranging from health to legislative matters (Consiglio Nazionale

dei Minori

1989, 1990).

Nothing has been produced, whether of a quantitative or qualitative nature, however, on poverty and related matters. The sociological literature is little better. In a recent book on inequality in Italy, the chapter dedicated to poverty examines poverty among families and aged people, but not among children (Sgritta and Innocenti 1993). This does not mean that this literature has little value, of course; it is simply that there exists, indisputably, a 'blind spot 1 as far as children and poverty are concerned. This is part of a more widespread problem of the marginalisation of children and childhood as subjects of sociological theory and research (Sgritta and Saporiti 1989; Saporiti and Sgritta 1990). But Italy is by no means a special case, as the contemporary literature on poverty reveals. For example, the Journal of Population

Economics

has very recently published a number

of studies on poverty in Europe. T w o compare poverty and poverty dynamics in several European countries (plus Canada and the United States; Duncan et al. 1993; Van den Bosch et al. 1993). But they contain no mention of child poverty itself; instead, they consider children only as a family attribute. In other words, the unit of the poverty count is always the family and/or the adults (including the aged). Or, for example, in a recent European comparative study, which reviews and analyses poverty trends, children do not appear - neither among the 'traditional' poor nor among those suffering from the sotermed 'new poverty' (Room, Lawson and Laczko 1989). W e could extend this list easily with further examples, but this would contribute little to the argument. Indeed, it could be countered that, after all, children live in families, and w e know quite a lot about family poverty. It is, for example, well-established that particular family characteristics are associated with high poverty risks, such as single parent status, large family size, the presence of very young children, and unemployment of the head of the family (Duncan et al. 1993; Van den Bosch et al. 1993; Room, Lawson and Laczko 1989; and many others). Table 1 summarises this for the UK, for example. Table 1: Proportion of dependent children in households with income below 50% of the average after housing costs: United Kingdom 1979-1987 children in households of which the head is:

1979

1981

1983

employed full-time single parent

5 45

8

6

42

unemployed

69

78

pensioner, ill or other all children

1985

1987

29

6 35

13 60

76

88

79

40

31

38

37

46

12.1

18. .0

16.6

19.9

25.7

Source: Bradshaw 1990, Table 3 W e also know quite a lot about some of the mechanisms implicated in the process of impoverishment amongst children. Studies have shown, for instance, that one of the most

242

A. Saporiti

important factors associated with inequalities of their economic well-being is the rising incidence of female-headed single-parent families. On the other hand, declining fertility rates act as a counteracting factor on poverty among children, simply because smaller families become more typical and each family must support fewer children (Cutright and Smith 1986; Wojtkiewicz 1992).

Counting poor children In the so-called 'social accounting system' represented by official statistics "children enjoy the unenviable privilege of being invisible; except for rare cases, children simply do not exist" (Sgritta and Saporiti 1989, 98-99). Since official statistics comprise the main data source for studying poverty in general, children's overall invisibility is carried over into the poverty statistics. In general, the unit of poverty count is the family or, sometimes, the single adult individual. From children's point of view this is a bias that results in both technical and substantive drawbacks. Firstly, children are almost never enumerated as poor individuals. They are simply merged into families. Secondly, the methods used to measure poverty which start from a family unit distort the picture of just who is poor: "In deciding on the unit for the poverty counts, it is especially important to remember that a substantial fraction of the poor individuals are children, and this fact may tend to get lost more when the unit for the count is something other than the individual" (Hill and Morgan 1985, 106If). "Were we to count children rather than families, we would, of course, come up with significantly higher figures, which might be considered politically inconvenient" (Duncan 1991, fn 2). Thirdly, the methods used in poverty research - at least from our children-centred point of view - all assume that family resources, both economic and non-economic, are equally distributed within the family: that is, adults and children are attributed the same share of family resources. Poverty studies assume "that the distribution of goods and services within households is such, that either all household members are poor, or none of them" (Van den Bosch 1993, 237). This is, a questionable assumption. Fifty years ago Alva Myrdal pointed out that "the problem of overcrowding is mainly a child welfare problem (...) - that is - children generally have a lower housing standard than adults" (1945, 245). The resource constituted by the housing space - if we consider it as a resource - is not at all equally distributed within the family. On this issue, I think it is quite interesting to observe that the very same objection has already been put forward by other scholars, but only with regard to women (Glendinning and Millar 1987, quoted in TaylorGooby 1991, 31). Fourthly, in counting poor families, we disregard the fact that "many children are essentially without families and are by definition without income. The many children in

Childhood and Poverty: from the Children's Point of View

243

institutions, foster care, or other placements outside their families are not included when families are counted as the units in poverty statistics" (Huston 1992, 7-8). In Italy, for instance, in 1990, 28,666 teenagers (aged 0-17 years) were living in residential care, that is, they did not form part of any family type. A similar point has been made about homeless people in general. "Other questions involve how we should treat 'unrelated individuals', the institutionalised population, and the homeless. (Note that the latter groups are not included in any official measure of poverty .)" (Weinberg 1986, 356). Fifthly, in applying the 'equivalence scales' used to adjust family income or consumption to the family size and composition, children are accorded the lowest weighting of all family members. In Wojtkiewicz's study, for example, the first child is weighted by 0.4 and each additional child by 0.3 (op.cit., 265) - quite apart from the fact that the weightings used in such studies vary (Delhausse, Luttgens and Perelman 1991, 85; Van den Bosch, 245). Finally, there is no consensus or common practice about which measures should be used to measure poverty in the first place. Some analysts use official government poverty measures, others prefer to describe the poverty gap; some take into account family income relative to the median income, others prefer to use the level of family consumption or subjective measures, and so on. All this results, self-evidently, in different estimates of the number of poor children. In conclusion, generally speaking, poverty studies consider neither children as units of observation nor childhood as a unit of analysis. Children are rather considered as an attribute of the family, as "economic adjuncts to parents" (Huston op. cit.). This is what accounts for the lack of a really systematic and reliable set of poverty data that refer to children qua children. We already know quite a lot on the impact of poverty on different aspects of the well-being of children (see, for example, Bradshaw 1990 and Huston 1992b). However, even this does not apply equally to all European countries, and the perspective adopted is characteristically adult or family biased. This leads to the central point of my argument: more qualified knowledge about children in poverty, both from a quantitative and a qualitative point of view, requires, in the first instance, that we change the ways sociological theory and research per se 'look at' children. Briefly stated, children should be considered as individuals in their own right, not only as members of households and families. Huston (1992a, 6), for instance, argues that an adequate analysis of children's poverty must adopt a perspective based on humanitarian, moral, human rights, and social equity principles. In other words, children have basic rights to quality of life in all respects, and this legitimates anti-poverty policies. Children have inherent value as individuals at any point in their lives, not simply as future adults. In societies that value social equity and justice, children's welfare should be regarded as essential. Acknowledging children in their own right is one aspect of a broader societal shift towards acknowledging the individuality and integrity of all human subjects and citizens, be they men or women, young adults, mature adults, or the elderly (Franklin

244

A. Saporiti

1986; Sgritta and Saporiti 1989; Frost and Stein 1989: Ch. 9; Verhellen 1989; Qvortrup 1990; Alderson 1992). Translated into the consequences of adopting such a perspective in social research and policy analysis on children's poverty, this implies both great effort and imagination in developing a systematic set of child-centred social indicators, that is, based on the child as the unit of observation. For instance, these indicators might include children's living arrangements by father's and mother's work status; the distribution of family income and expenditures by the number of children at different ages in the family; and the duration of children's material and social deprivation. As far as Italy is concerned, such kinds of information are not yet available. However, during the last decade some improvement in this field is worth recording. The 1991 Italian Census was planned to produce some 'children-based' data: thus we know - both at national and local level - how many children are living with two or only one employed parents and how many with both parents unemployed. We are, however, at the beginning of the development of a systematic and comprehensive set of social and economic indicators based on children as the unit of count and analysis. As far as social policy is concerned, whilst it is true that the great majority of our children live within families, it is not the case that family policies are ipso facto childcentred policies. The assumption is often made that policies which aim to reduce parents' poverty will also solve the problems of poor children. Yet, the interests of children are not always identical to those of their parents, for instance, labour policies that aim to create new jobs through geographical mobility could conflict with the children's interest to grow up with stable peer groups and friends, local policies envisaged to provide economic support to families with dependent elderly in the family - like the ones recently put forward in Italy - can draw resources away from children. Policies that aim to increase female labour force participation can result in neglecting children - to have a working mother. Does it mean sharing a higher family income, or partly losing the primary nurturing and caring person? Furthermore, family economic well-being is not necessarily the same thing as ensuring children's welfare (Duncan 1991). Increasing family and child allowances, for instance, generally increases the family income; producing direct benefits for children's welfare. However, this cannot automatically be assumed a priori. Furthermore, family and child allowances are usually given to parents and not to children. Therefore they depend entirely on their parents, having no income of their own.

Children and childhood In arguing that children become a unit of observation in poverty studies, we are only recognising that they have their own rights as full individuals. Speaking about poverty, we are claiming that they do have the right to be represented, both formally and substantially - that is, they have the right to be counted as individuals and the right to a fair amount of societal resources.

245

Childhood and Poverty: from the Children's Point of View

U p to this point, however, w e are still at a level of micro-analysis, albeit aggregated. W e need to consider macro-level analysis, too. For example, in 1994 and for the first time in the history of the Italian trade unions, the number of pensioners enrolled in the major organisation (CGIL) outnumbered the number of employed members. This is one indication of an emerging shift in the balance of generational power in society. W e might then ask whether, in general, the growing political and social pressure of the elderly may lead to marginalising the interests of children. In practical terms, this might result in an age-based re-distribution of societal resources. A number of writers have contended that this has already begun to happen, using precisely the example of the effects of changing public policies for the distribution of poverty and the composition of the poor (Preston 1984, 1988; O'Hare 1985; Sgritta 1991, 1993). In different ways and with different emphases, all contend that changes in the demographic structure of European populations and the lack of support for anti-poverty programs for groups other than the elderly have promoted an increase in the number of children in poverty. Table 2 (below) shows the unbalanced distribution of poverty in early 1990s Italy: it is the young rather than the old who are poor. Table 2: Population and poor people by age group: Italy, 1991 (%), Age groups

Population

Poor

0-18 years 19-30

21.7 46.4

31.5 40.3

51-65

18.5

13.4

66 and over

13.4

14.8

100%

100%

Total Source: Sgritta 199, Table 11

This demonstrates the important point that children's poverty is not only an individual or family problem, but also has a macro-social dimension - that is, it is implicated in the relationships between different social groups. Tackling the issue of children's poverty from this point of view requires a further conceptual and methodological step. Treating children as individuals in their own right must be coupled with the consideration that they constitute a social group, a social category in the same way as (for example) adults, the elderly, women do. Conceptually, w e should speak both of children as individuals and of childhood as a social category, a social status with its own position and contribution to society, in the manner argued by Qvortrup (this volume). Until this issue is dealt with theoretically seriously, it is unlikely that our empirical knowledge about children's poverty will improve in scope and quality.

246

A. Saporiti

Concluding remarks European societies and policies still have a long way to go in according children their rights and their rightful place in the commonweal. The following list comprises a suggested working agenda for pursuing this goal; the points have no intrinsic order of priority, and are perhaps better regarded as an interlinked whole.

1. Identify and develop indicators based on reliable statistical or other data-gathering methods to assess the actual situation of children (e.g., Jensen and Saporiti 1992) and the status of their rights in our countries (e.g., for Italy, Saulle 1994). 2. Exploration of the relationships between children's rights and citizenship '$ rights. We would expect to find a gap between the two, certainly in empirical terms, which would confirm children's social marginalisation as a group of citizens (Franklin 1986; Lomasky 1987; Alderson 1992). 3. Theoretical and empirical analysis of childhood as an integral element of the social structure, and its relationship with other structural elements. 4. Investigate more fully, both theoretically and empirically, the role of 'age' in the social division of welfare, especially as far as the thesis of an unbalanced distribution of welfare in favour of social groups other than children is concerned. Follow this up with the formulation of a theory of distributive justice that takes into account both the interests of different social categories - including childhood, of course - and the limits imposed by resources shortage (Sgritta 1994). 5. Envisage and implement children/childhood-centred policy. Tentatively, we might distinguish between 'middle-range' and 'structural'policies. Middle-range policies should be children-centred and aimed to fight and reduce contextual poverty - that is, all those forms ofpoverty attributable to the narrow environment of children's life (family, school, peer group an so on). Structural policies, on the other hand, should be childhood-centred and aimed to adapt their interest to that one of other groups participating to the society structuration. This is not an easy task, however, at least as far as Italy is concerned. As a matter of fact, neither anti-poverty policies nor children's policies as such exist in Italy. If at all, there are policies addressed to families with children. Italian literature on social policy hardly shows the heading 'children/childhood policies' (see, e.g., Collicelli 1991; Bramanti 1993) - apart from the very few scholars supporting a new sociological and policy approach to the subject. However, Italian family policies do not respond to the main points previously stated either. Firstly, with a few exceptions, social interventions expressly addressed to families are too lightweight to meet the needs and the expectations of the families and their dependent members, both in quantitative and above all in qualitative terms - to reduce, in other words, what I have called the ' contextual poverty' of children. Secondly, be they financial transfers or services, these policies are generally addressed to children

Childhood and Poverty: from the Children's Point of View

247

indirectly, that is through the medium represented by adult family members. Finally, and most significant from our point of view, family policies are mainly addressed to 'problem' families and children, that is, to subjects affected by different types of physical, material and social pathologies. In my view, one sign testifying that Italian social policy is far from responding to the demands of 'childhood' is that lawgivers and policy-makers have paid poor attention to 'normal' children - that is, to a category of active contributors to the 'social product'. Briefly stated, within the Italian social policy context, children and childhood are still an indistinct appendix of the family, under full guardianship of its adult members. This is, however, part of a more general attitude that still refuses to recognise children's interests and opinions in all matters concerning themselves, their personal and political rights: in a word, a full citizenship. Whether and how this might change in the future is impossible to predict with any accuracy. Italy is undergoing a remarkable process of social, cultural and political change. However, the situation is still too fluid to allow hypotheses about the future. Whether we shall be able to put the idea of the 'child citizen' envisaged by the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child into a concrete form remains to be seen. But should we succeed in doing so, it will be a step towards the eradication of poverty among our children.

Rumanian Childhood and Youth Research and Policy in Transition Mihaela

Minulescu

In describing the conditions under which Rumanian children and young people are growing up at the present time, it is difficult to avoid drawing a dramatic and gloomy picture that may appear overdone, perhaps genuinely incredible, to western readers. Nevertheless, the consequences of the collapse of the Ceaucescu regime and the onset of transition to democracy and the market economy have been particularly severe in Rumania, and continue to be so. There is no lack of indicators showing that children and young people are amongst the most vulnerable social groups in this context. Under such circumstances, there is also no lack of urgent topics that require research and policy attention. It is impossible to respond adequately to these needs: there are too many and the available resources are too few. This discussion is intended to serve as an initial sketch of some of the issues and themes for which we do have up-to-date material and which have obvious relevance in reforming and renewing childhood and youth policy in Rumania today. This chapter begins with a statistical profile of Rumanian living conditions today, followed by a policy-related description of the deterioration in children's living standards since 1989. The third section presents some recent research findings on young Rumanians' attitudes, values and perceptions of their own situations, concluding with their views on youth policy and affairs.

Living conditions The 1992 Census recorded 22.8 million inhabitants, of whom almost nine tenths (89.3%) reported themselves to be ethnic Rumanians. Ethnic Hungarians form the largest minority group (7.1%). Just under 2% said that they were of Sinti/Roma origin, and the remaining 1% belong to German, Ukrainian and Lippovian minorities. 30% of the population are between 0 and 18 years old. By 1993 the gross birth rate had declined to 10.9 per thousand inhabitants from 16 per thousand in 1989. The gross mortality rate has risen from 10.7 to 11.6 per thousand across the same period (NCS 1992, 1993). Zamfir, Pop and Zamfir (1994) have collated a series of macro-economic indicators that reveal the overall worsening of living conditions between 1989 and 1993. The

252

M. Minulescu

Rumanian economy had begun to contract long before 1989, so that the GNP (gross national product) for 1989 already showed a contraction of 2.9% over the previous year. Rates of GNP contraction rose to about 20% per year for the next three years through to 1992, in 1993 finally showing a much smaller contraction of 4.7%. Annual inflation rates have risen sharply, with prices more than doubling between 1989 and 1991, and then exploding from 1992 to reach a value of 3198.7 in 1993 compared with 1989 (as baseline 100). As a proportion of GNP, public expenditure on health and especially - education has risen between 1989 and 1992, although the figures remain low in comparison with western Europe (2.8% and 3.6% respectively). But of particular interest here is that the proportion of GNP accounted for by family and maternity allowances has fallen from 2.8% to 1.1% over the same period (an issue to which we return further below). Real wages have fallen, so that in 1992 their level lay at 82.5% of that in the baseline year 1989. Real wages per inhabitant had dropped by 1992 to 61.7% of their 1989 level. Food prices have risen as a proportion of expenditure over the same period, so that in 1992 they accounted for 57.5% of household outgoings in comparison with 51.6% in 1989. Along with inflation and falling incomes, average calorie consumption per day fell accordingly, from 2,949 per inhabitant in 1989 to 2,679 in 1992; in particular, the consumption of meat has fallen. Registered unemployment rates were first assembled in 1991 and were officially placed at 1.8%, but rose by 1992 to 8.4% and 1993 10.2%. Official statistics (ibid.) also record an approximate doubling of the gross criminality rate from 1989 (as baseline) to 1992 (187.1). The juvenile criminality rate has similarly risen from 12 to 19 per thousand over the same period. Radulian's (1993) study for UNICEF also records a sharp rise in the number of children apprehended in custody between 1991 and 1992, estimating that a number of young people representing about 0.15% of the 14 to 18 population were taken into prison custody that year. Two fifths of the offences committed by juveniles were of a violent nature (murder, armed robbery and rape); nine tenths of the offenders were male and three fifths came from urban areas. 28% of these young offenders were either illiterate or had only been through primary schooling; a further 50% had completed lower secondary education only. A quarter came from 'broken families' and many more from 'inadequate' family environments. Additionally, the problem of 'street children' (the roofless, the homeless, runaways and 'street vagabonds and beggars') has become a serious one in the large cities, especially in Bucharest; it is estimated that at least 5,000 children belong to this highly marginalised and vulnerable group (Chelu 1993). As yet unpublished data from the Legislative Committee of the Senate indicate that 15- to 29-year-olds are, in autumn 1994, now 54.7% of the officially unemployed. Those most likely to be registered unemployed are under 25 (69%), female (57%) and in manual or less qualified occupational sectors (88%).

Rumanian Childhood and Youth Research and Policy in Transition

253

Children's living standards The interministerial National Committee for Child Protection, which was established in March 1993 to better co-ordinate the work of the four Ministries with policy responsibilities in relation to children's affairs (Education, Labour and Labour Protection, Health and the Secretariat for the Disabled) is currently developing and implementing a new Child Protection Policy programme. This programme includes establishing an overall judicial and administrative framework for child policy, training policy for social, educational and medical personnel working with children, child-relevant social problems prevention policy, and policy frameworks for institutional care and the quality of life of children living in care. So far, the Committee has succeeded in establishing a new nursery-nurse training programme, in bringing about some improvement of conditions in children's homes, and in developing guidelines for intervention on the street children problem. But the scale of child policy problems facing the Committee is overwhelming. Children are amongst those that have suffered most of all in the transition process so far. There are two main reasons for this. Firstly, family incomes have collapsed. Secondly, the former system of family support services has been eroded. Under state socialism, three features informed the way in which child and family policies were developed. Firstly, Rumania experienced rapid industrialisation and urbanisation in parallel with forms of employment specific to planned economies (state enterprises and high levels of maternal employment). Secondly, the state of the economy deteriorated, especially after 1980. Thirdly, birth rates fell, despite all efforts made by the state to prevent this. After 1989, one of the first measures taken by the government was the legalisation of abortion as part of the restoration of women's rights. However, given the continuing lack of availability of and information about reliable contraception, it was inevitable that the abortion rate rose to very high levels very rapidly. In 1992, for every 100 live children born, there were 315 abortions. This depressed the birth rate still further. The maternal mortality rate, however, fell too: from 1.69 per thousand live births in 1989 to 0.6 in 1992. It is important here to emphasise that these trends have been much more noticeable for better-off families than for those who are poor, where the birth rate has risen rather than fallen. Similarly, the proportion of children born to mothers aged under 20 has increased from 15.1% in 1989 to 17.3% in 1992, and the proportion of children born to unmarried mothers has not declined as expected following the liberalisation of the abortion laws (Radulian, op. cit.). The statistical data outlined earlier shows that general standards of living have declined significantly since 1991. This means that more children are now living in poverty, all the more so since it is poorer families for whom the birth rate has declined least and who have, on average, more children. It is estimated that over two thirds (65.6%) of Rumanian children are presently living at a standard below the official subsistence level (Zamfir 1993). Real income decline has been accompanied by above average increases in food prices, as noted above. The quality of children's diet has suffered accordingly, with unknown consequences for their physical and cognitive development.

254

M. Minulescu

The effect upon the numbers o f children in institutional care has been paradoxical. 11% fewer children were lodged in institutions in 1992 compared with 1990, but it was expected that the decrease would be far stronger. However, the 'poverty shock' provides an explanation: many families have fallen abruptly into poverty and have little expectation o f recovery in the foreseeable future. One coping strategy is to give their children into care, generally seen as a short-term expedient at first but becoming a long-term predicament. The dreadful conditions in Rumanian children's homes exposed by the international media immediately following the collapse o f the Ceaucescu regime brought a flood o f resources from abroad and pressure on the government to take steps to improve the situation. The result has been that living standards in children's homes have become, broadly speaking, often considerably better than those in families. Placing one's child in care may mean, for Rumanian parents, doing the very best one can for the child's welfare (ibid). Rumanian state socialism supported families with children in three main ways: by direct transfer of resources (children's allowances, birth grants and benefits for mothers o f three or more children); by providing families with tax-free goods and services; and by subsidising goods and services for children. After 1989, subsidies were rapidly phased out with the liberalisation of prices. Whilst it took until 1993 to strike out the last remaining subsidies o f goods - of whatever kind - it was subsidies on children's goods that were among the first to go. Compensation by way o f increasing direct transfers o f resources to families on behalf o f children has not occurred - as has been the case in Czechia, Slovakia and Hungary, for example. Until 1989, child allowances in Rumania were paid out to those in the active labour force. This means that families in which mothers did not work outside the home, for example, were not eligible. The exclusion also applied to those who worked in non-state enterprises. After 1989, o f course, both 'excluded' categories expanded enormously, but it was only in 1993 that children's allowances were paid to all families, regardless o f parental employment status. In all former Soviet bloc countries except Poland, the real value of child allowances has declined, but the decline has been most marked of all in Rumania. In real terms, child allowances have declined even more than have wages: they have a value o f 3 7 . 4 % o f their 1989 value. Birth grants have been frozen at their 1990 level of 1,500 Lei. At that time, this sum was equivalent to half o f a median salary. Today, it is worth 2 % o f a median salary, or, in other words, it is worthless. Similarly, the value o f the monthly benefit paid to mothers o f three or more children, also frozen at the 1989 level o f 4 5 0 Lei, is two loaves o f bread. The 2 0 % reduction on income tax given to adults with dependent children - to recompense some o f the loss in value of family benefits - was once more withdrawn in 1993. Finally, although parental leave was introduced after 1989 to allow parents to stay at home to take care of children under one at a guaranteed 6 5 % of former salary, many do not take up the option to do so. On the one hand, they can hardly afford it, and on the other hand, they fear to lose their jobs regardless (Tolstobrach 1994). Whilst there have so far been few structural changes to the child-care and schooling systems, redistribution of costs onto families' shoulders has taken place in the pre-school

Rumanian Childhood and Youth Research and Policy in Transition

255

sector. Fees for kindergartens and nursery have been increased to keep up with the rate of inflation and have not taken the latest decreases in real wages into account. This means that up until 1992 these fees were about 10% of median wages, and now have risen to 16%. As a result, fewer parents send their children to pre-school, and this trend is accentuated by rising unemployment rates (which are still higher for women than for men) together with declining numbers of very young children. Between 1989 and 1992 the proportion of pre-school-age children in nurseries and kindergartens dropped from 63.2% to 53 .3%, the sharpest decline in central/eastern European countries with the exception of Poland. The difficulties are exacerbated by the transfer of responsibility for the pre-school sector to local authorities, which still have no regularised budgets. The drop in primary schooling participation rates is of special concern: 4% between 1989 and 1992 (98.1% to 93.9%), which is the biggest drop in former Communist countries with the exception of Bulgaria (NCS 1992). State socialism in central and eastern Europe developed a large scale social protection system for families and children as a response to their lesser than average resources. The transition period has brought a worsening of their financial situation, but social protection measures and benefits have suffered continuous erosion. These benefit systems were popular, and so governments could not abolish them with impunity. Instead, they have whittled away at their value. This process has been most visible in Rumania (with the exception of Russia and the Ukraine). The reasons seem to be political as well as economical: children are the most neglected social group in the game of applying political pressure. Governments may be continuously subject to the political demands of interest groups, but no social or lobby group effectively promotes children's interests. At the same time, a series of vague and unsupported suppositions suggest that the state should not encourage people to have more children: only the already poorly off will oblige, and they will be happy to produce children in return for the transfer of social benefits that allow parents to survive without taking on employment. Added to this, the World Bank has recommended that Rumania freeze child allowances as an interim measure in the shift to a means-tested social welfare system in which family and child benefits are incomedependent. Finally, however, the range and scale of problems facing Rumania are so enormous that any government will be hard put not to direct its resources to the most urgent, short-term policy priorities. Policies on behalf of children are, on the whole, policies of long-term investment, and are thus neglected

Young R u m a n i a n s The statistical description presented earlier concluded with figures showing the overrepresentation of the under-25s among the registered unemployed. In 1993, labour force statistics indicated that at least one third (36.4%) of the under-25s were unemployed (NCS 1993). Zamfir's (op. cit.) poverty study concludes that young people's circumstances and prospects continue to worsen. The absence of any coherent youth

256

M. Minulescu

policy that might register and take into account their situations offers little grounds for optimism about improvement in the near future. In June 1993 we conducted a representative sample survey of 1,058 15- to 29-yearolds in Rumania; about half were in full-time education and the other half had entered the labour market, including those in the agricultural sector (CSCPT 1994; Badescu and Minulescu 1993). The findings show that 86% of the respondents consider life in Rumania to be difficult, 80% consider they can trust no-one, 71% think that government officials are uninterested in the people's problems and 67% take the view that now is not the time for young adults to have children of their own. Half the respondents (53%) focus their concentration on the present only, preferring to blanket out both the past and the future. 70% of these young Rumanians are prepared to make sacrifices and to enter into hard competition - but only if they can be assured that after some years this would bring concrete improvements in their lives. Their greatest concerns in these respects are corruption and rising crime: on both these counts, virtually all (95%) replied that they were not prepared to endure these 'side-effects' of transition. But large majorities were not prepared to 'pay the price of transition1 if this meant poverty (76%), inequality of opportunities (69%) and unemployment (66%) either. 45% of those surveyed considered themselves to be poor, and they attributed the causes of their poverty to unemployment, family status (having a family of one's own to support), inflation, accidents and illness. They saw their labour market position - accurately - as highly precarious: it is young people who are most vulnerable to low wages, temporary and irregular employment, and unemployment. From 1991 we have developed a series of small research studies - some still in progress - looking at young Rumanians' self-image and social values (Minulescu 1992, 1994). Data has been collected with interviewer-administered questionnaires containing a range of established socio-psychological attitude scales (such as Bogardus 7-point and Likert 5-point) for a sample of 244 15- to 25-year-olds in Bucharest, spread equally by age and sex. Three quarters of those questioned were in full-time education of some kind, either in upper secondary school or in higher education. Two aspects of the findings are of particular interest here, for different reasons. Firstly, the young Rumanians studied are especially attached to aesthetic and philosophic-ethical values, whereas very few indeed (only 7%) saw economic values as important. This explicit detachment from the life circumstances in which so many of them personally find themselves (quite apart from Rumania more generally) is of some interest. We think that it reflects the fact that many are no longer able to find their 'social and economic place' in Rumanian life and that, as a result, many are living in a state of high psychic tension in that they have no sense of actual or potential channels for achievement and accomplishment in their lives. These disorientating and stressful aspects of their lives are, on the other hand, mitigated by the positive orientations they express towards affective values, which help to relieve the sharply negative tensions they are experiencing. Ultimately, however, their attitudes and values are suffused with disillusion, indecision and discontent. This is well reflected in the significant extent of non-response to those

Rumanian Childhood and Youth Research and Policy in Transition

257

questions that asked whether they were considering emigration and how they saw Rumania's future. This brings us to a second aspect of these studies' findings. The young Rumanians surveyed have 'romantic' rather than 'realistic' views about Europe and Europeans. They are inclined to think in terms of Rumania 'coming home' to the European family to which they are clear they belong, that represents their spiritual identity. This vision of Europe is an aesthetic and philosophical one - in confomity with the kinds of values most important to them - and within this vision, they see themselves as especially close to western Europe's Romanic peoples (most specifically the French, Italians, Portuguese and Spanish). Their views of European peoples are, at the same time, informed by stereotypes. Young Rumanians see Rumanians above all as hospitable and friendly, intelligent and adaptable, generous and humanitarian; they express split views on whether Rumanians can be described as active or passive kinds of people. The French are seen to have the characteristics that Rumanians themselves value: the French are 'civilised and cultivated1 optimists, they are sensitive and emotional, with aesthetic and artistic sense. These views cannot, for the most part, be drawn from personal experience, since very few young Rumanians have had any opportunity to travel to western Europe. Their acceptance and rejection - and thus their construction of sterotypes - of ethnic and national groups is deeply rooted in Rumanian political history. The Germans and the Greeks enjoy the highest degree of acceptance; the Hungarians, Sinti/Roma, Russians and Turks are those most rejected. Hence it is unsurprising to find that these young Rumanians' stereotypes of Hungarians, for example, are strongly negatively contoured. Hungarians are judged above all to be wicked and aggressive nationalists who are arrogant. This coldness and animosity - which also extends at least as sharply to the Sinti/Roma - between the Rumanians as majority ethnic group, Hungarians as the largest minority group, and Sinti/Roma as a highly marginalised ethnic and social group (and see Tóth, this volume), is a long-standing phenomenon in Rumania. The repression of ethnic minorities under the Ceacescu regime has left a heavy legacy in this respect, both in young Rumanians' values and attitudes and in the anger and resentment of those affected. Youth policy in Rumania has hardly begun to acknowledge these kinds of problems, and indeed, young people judge the government's policy response to their situations as altogether inadequate. In our recent youth survey (Badescu and Minulescu 1993) we included a number of questions about this topic. The respondents identified the following major policy problems and demands. Firstly, vocational training and labour force integration is not assured, and the youth employment legislation that does exist is not effectively implemented. They demand that privatisation be speeded up, that recruitment and promotion be competence-based, that more training programmes be offered (especially for enhancing young people's management skills) and incentives for young entrepreneurs be intoduced. Secondly, family support measures are inadequate and this leads young adults to put off or give up founding their own family, although many would like to do so. Thirdly, rising rates of juvenile delinquency are viewed as a very serious problem indeed, especially amongst those respondents themselves aged under 18. They

M. Minulescu

258

demand the introduction of a specific juvenile justice system, juvenile rehabilitation and reintegration programmes and reform of institutional care arrangements. Fourthly, politicians are seen to be relatively uninterested in youth problems (simply making empty declarations) and inefficient in formulating policies to deal with them. Those respondents who are already in the labour force (and therefore tend to be older) are especially critical of politicians in this respect. Table 1 (below) shows their responses to a series of statements related to youth policy in Rumania. Table 1: Young Rumanians' views on youth policy issues Attitude Statements

1

2

3

4

5

Politics can be controlled by the public

12

15

25

27

21

6

7

17

25

42

Young people place present society in question

34

24

15

11

10

Young people are interested in the problems faced by Rumania at present

30

23

23

11

10

Youth associations are consulted in the legislative process

5

6

17

19

52

Current legislation is consistent in its approach to the central problems young people face

1

6

23

29

41

27

29

21

10

9

Young people trust government decisionmakers

Young people wish to take an active part in social decisionmaking

Note: 1 = fully agree, 5 = disagree completely; figures are percentages

Source: Badescu and Minulescu 1993 These data lead us to conclude that young people are interested in taking an active part in the shaping and development of a new Rumania, but they see themselves as having insufficient opportunities for making their voices heard and, in any case, have little trust in the will and competence of government and politicians to act appropriately and effectively. Despite the wide differences in the governments and the life circumstances under which young Rumanians live in comparison with young people in western Europe, it would seem that in their judgements of young people's position as citizens and of the priority accorded to youth policy, eastern and western youth do hold some views and experiences in common.

Young People and Social Transformation: Associative Life in Post-Communist and Independent Slovakia Ladislav Machacek

Introduction The 'velvet' revolution in the former Czechoslovakia and the subsequent split of the federated republic into two sovereign states has brought Slovakia and the Slovaks more prominently into the international public eye than has been the case for many decades. The first task, then, is to set recent political events into historical perspective and to offer some basic information about the country and its people. The Czechoslovak confederation began its seventy years of 'cohabitation' after the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian empire at the end of the First World War in 1918. This represented, at that time, a step forward for the Slovaks in terms of educational development and cultural self-determination, although industrialisation and urbanisation did not set in for some considerable time after this. The push for fuller self-determination and more balanced modernisation for Slovakia led, amongst other things, to ambivalence and opportunism during the period of German national socialist expansionism and brought a brief period of 'protected independence' for Slovakia, followed, of course, by the collapse and defeat of Nazi Germany and the division of Europe into two blocs. Within the Soviet bloc, Czechoslovakia was restabilised and finally established as the Czechoslovak Federal Socialist Republic in 1968; the fate of Dubcek's aim to build socialism with a human face is only too well-known to need repetition. Nevertheless, during the 1970s, progress was made in equalising the rates of development and living standards of Czechia and Slovakia. Following the collapse of the Soviet bloc after 1989, Czechoslovakia was plunged into an economic transformation process that had - and continues to have - dramatic consequences for the population. Government economic strategies were seen to be producing severe inequalities between the two countries in the federation. For the Slovaks, this meant that heavy engineering - disproportionately represented in Slovakia's industrial structure - was forced into a rapid conversion process that destabilised the regional economic base and, in general, rates of unemployment rose much more sharply in Slovakia than in Czechia. For older generations, this was like a nightmare repetition of the period between 1918 and 1938, when the initial period of Czechoslovakia or unitary state was accompanied by imbalanced economic development that worked to the

260

L. Machacek

disadvantage of Slovakia. These fears - and the response of the Czechs, who did not see themselves as particularly favoured either - were turned to political advantage on both sides. The confrontation between conservative liberalism in Czechia (represented by Klaus) and nationalist populism in Slovakia (represented by Meciar) eventually resulted in the decision to end the federation in summer 1992. The independent republic of Slovakia came officially into existence at the beginning of 1993. In the eyes of the Slovaks themselves, independence is understood as the positive outcome of over one hundred years of struggle for national sovereignty within what is hoped will become a unified Europe. Slovakia is a small country whose territory measures some 49,000 square kilometres populated by something under five and a half million people. One third of the population live in communities of under 2,000 inhabitants; over two fifths live in communities of no more than 5,000 inhabitants. Slovak communities are typically small because of the mountainous terrain of much of the country; Slovak society is therefore traditionally rural, with significant urbanisation taking place only very recently indeed (and especially during the 1980s). Following the cessation of state housing subsidies and construction programmes after 1989, accommodation has become one of the most pressing problems for young Slovak citizens, wherever they live. In common with the situation of young people elsewhere in post-communist Europe, it has become extremely difficult to find let alone afford - housing independent of one's parents. In our 1991 survey of young 14to 18-year-old Slovaks' lives and values, finding independent accommodation was regarded as one of the most important issues with which they had to cope, more so than finding a permanent job, and much more so than acquiring a good education or establishing a partnership and family (Ministry of Education, Youth and Sport 1991). This contrasts sharply with findings from a similar survey conducted in 1990 with young Austrians of the same age group. Their overwhelming concern was to find permanent employment, followed by getting a good education and then finding a partner; accommodation came much lower down on the list of concerns (Landesregierung Vorarlberg 1990). A quarter of Slovaks are aged under 15, some 17% are of retirement age. By the year 2005, two fifths of those currently in the labour force will have retired, which, under normal circumstances, would mean that younger generations of Slovaks would be rapidly absorbed into employment. However, employment opportunities are presently contracting as a consequence of economic transformation: a quarter of the under 25s are currently unemployed, compared with an overall unemployment rate that has oscillated between 12% and 16% between 1991 and 1994. Two fifths of those who are unemployed have been out of work for longer than a year. Slovakia is not a mono-cultural society; the population includes a number of minority groups, and in particular ethnic Hungarians and Roma/Sinti peoples. Ethnic Hungarians are almost 11% of the Slovak population and inhabit a compact area in the south-east of the country: 95% live in 192 communities which altogether total some 158,000 inhabitants. The Hungarian Slovaks have a strong sense of identity and political group

Young People and Social Transformation in Slovakia

261

consciousness: in the 1994 elections, their three-party coalition together won 10% of the national vote, i.e., almost all Hungarian Slovaks voted for 'their' parties. Roma/Sinti peoples living in Slovakia - not all of whom possess Slovak citizenship under the postindependence arrangements, for a variety of reasons but including difficulties in securing acceptance of their citizenship applications - are those under most threat at present. Concentrated in the eastern part of the country, they represent some 5% (about 250,000) of Slovak residents; no other European country has such a high proportion of Roma/Sinti amongst its population. Their living standards are poor; where, for example, average life expectancy in Slovakia reaches 71 years, Roma/Sinti men can expect to live only 55 years, women only 59 years. In the early 1980s, 46% of this ethnic group were aged under 15; dependency upon social benefits - especially child allowances - for income tends to keep birthrates well above average. Unsurprisingly, levels of social marginalisation and exposure to social risk are high amongst Roma/Sinti youth, reflected in high numbers of deserted children, poor educational participation and achievement levels, high rates of unemployment - and, inevitably, involvement in crime (especially theft and robbery). In the past, state policies of residential dispersal and enforced social assimilation have proved unsuccessful and counterproductive. At present, it is clear that new policies and measures are necessary that can succeed not only in raising living standards and educational participation but also in respecting the cultural integrity of the Roma/Sinti peoples. Just how such policies can be best formulated and - above all - financed raises fundamental issues connected to the process of building a new state and its institutions on the principles of pluralist democracy and under the conditions of a market economy. Since Slovaks wish, on the one hand, to avoid a restitution of the state paternalism characteristic of Eastern European state socialism, but, on the other hand, are inclined by habit to expect to be 'looked after' in the old way, it is something of a balancing act to find good policy routes and measures. This is no less the case in considering the field of youth policy and the rejuvenation of associative life, which is the topic of this contribution.

Youth organisations in Slovakia Slovakia made new legal provision (under Act 83) for the support of civic youth organisations in March 1990 (before independence but after the collapse of state socialism) and this has been the foundation for debate and implementation since that date. So far, 64 youth associations have been registered under the terms of the new legislation, and all receive financial subsidies for their activities. They are, therefore, all affiliated to the Youth Council of Slovakia (YCS), which means that each operates in at least five (of 35 in all) districts and has at least 500 members, of whom at least half are under 26. Regardless of their specific affiliation (party political, confessional, sports, special interest groups, etc.), forty of these associations are engaged in some form of youth work with

262

L. Machacek

young people. This is of some significance, since in 1991, 87% of our youth survey respondents reported that they knew of no youth information and advice centre to which they might turn in need. Lack of personal experience with such services was presumably one important reason why almost three fifths of them said they would not - or only as a last resort - consult such a centre were they to need help with a personal problem (Ministry of Education, Youth and Sport 1991). Given what w e know about the importance and usefulness of such services - howsoever provided - in other countries, it would seem that Slovakia's new and reconstituted youth associations are filling a gap in this respect. What is the social and political context in which these associations have emerged? Immediately after the velvet revolution, there was a strong reaction against all things political amongst the younger population. In the 1991 survey (ibid.), almost 85% of respondents said they had little or no interest in politics and only 18% said they would be willing to assume a public function or office. 58% said they did not know if they would do so or not, which is an indication of the severe uncertainties and doubts about politics amongst young people at that time. 4 0 % said that they would not vote in a federal election (then: Czechoslovakia), but not many more intended to vote in regional parliamentary elections (then: Slovakia) either (35% did not intend to vote). Young people's disillusion with established and institutionalised politics has become an issue of great concern across Europe in recent years, although obviously, the reasons for that disillusion and its 'peaking' over time differ between eastern and western Europe (Puuronen 1992). Nevertheless, social and political participation in civil society is an indispensable part of the democratic polity, and youth associations therefore play an important strategic educational role in encouraging active citizenship within a pluralist political culture. Unlike the situation pre-1989, young people in Slovakia now have a genuine opportunity to decide to belong to and participate in associations of their own choosing. But there remains a certain reluctance to do so, a reluctance to get involved in any sort of organised activity of this nature. In all three surveys conducted to date since 1990, w e find that at least four fifths of young Slovaks (of different age groups between 14 and 29) do not belong to any civil association at all, whether specifically intended for young people or not (Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports 1991; Institute of Sociology 1992, 1993). Sports associations are the most popular (or least unpopular, with 31% belonging to such a group in 1992); women's, charitable and professional associations the most insignificant (under 10% report belonging to these kinds of groups in 1992). Our attitude surveys (Institute of Sociology 1992, 1993) included adults as well as young people in its sample, and w e asked the older age groups what they thought about youth associations. About half of the adult respondents (1992: 56%; 1993: 45%) took the view that young people themselves should decide whether they wanted to join such groups or not, and very few indeed (1992: 0.8%; 1993: 3.3%) were against the idea of youth associations altogether. On the other hand, adult respondents had clear preferences about the kinds of youth associations they thought useful and appropriate for young people.

Young People and Social Transformation in Slovakia

263

sports and special interest groups receive considerable approval (in 1993, 25% would advise young people to join such an association), whereas few (1992: 3,5%; 1993: 1,7%) would recommend taking out membership in political youth organisations. The shifts in adult opinion between 1992 and 1993 are interesting in this context: they suggest a certain anxiety amongst adults about the political activities of the young and to the possible encouragement of these by participation in youth associations generally. If there is a 'crisis' in youth associative life in Slovakia, then it is a reaction against state paternalism rather than a rejection of social and political participation as such. Young Slovaks are not interested in becoming involved in traditional-style party political associations. Rather, their engagement can be won by organisations that offer a wide range of services for young people, which are directly concerned to build up youth work activities, and which encourage and leave space for self-help in solving problems. In policy terms, this means shifting the emphasis towards the principle of subsidising activities rather than institutions as such. Youth associations should receive funding assistance on the basis of what they do, not on the basis that they exist. This process can be painful for all concerned. Controversies, conflicts and competition for inevitably scarce resources introduce tactics into associations' modes of action, seeking ways to influence and persuade us of their value and to knock others out of the game - including by casting doubts on groups' and officials' trustworthiness, for example But such tactics, too, belong to the toolbox of non-violent civic relations; Slovak young people will need to know that they exist, even if they would prefer some of these tools remain unused. Once more, adults surveyed (ibid.) in Slovakia during 1992 are not keen to see young people availing themselves of the full range of tools of political persuasion either. They (about half of adults surveyed) are most likely to find young people's public articulation of their demands acceptable when these are voiced in mild ways, i.e. communication and dialogue through media debates. 'Happenings' in public settings and open letters or petitions receive the support of between a further 10 - 20% of adults; education boycotts and strikes are acceptable for only 7% of adults. Anything more active is acceptable to hardly any adults at all: fewer than 1% accept the idea of occupations, virtually none approve of protest demos, and none support hunger strikes. The 1993 repeat survey found still less acceptance of public articulation of youth demands beyond the mildest level, which accords with the notion that adult Slovakians are presently somewhat worried about political unrest - or perhaps simply want a quieter life after the upheavals of the last five years.

Relations between state and civil society: the YCS and the government Given the subordination of youth organisations to the communist state and the control exercised by the Party over associative life in general, it is not surprising to find that the new youth associations have been keen to demonstrate that this is no longer so. They have been concerned to draw clear distinctions between their interests and those of the

264

L. Machacek

government and state apparatus during the processes of negotiation over the transfer of property rights, representation on official bodies, and funding arrangements. In late 1990, the president of the YCS published an open letter in which it was pointed out that the then federal government of Czechoslovakia was dragging its feet on the transfer of property from the former state organisations to the new associations - in contrast to the YCS's own rapid actions on this kind of question - and suggested that this could be taken as evidence of efforts to paralyse the youth movement and blunt the scope of their possible political activities by denying them the use of resources to which they are entitled (Smena 1990, 4). The fear at that time was that property and resources would fall into the wrong hands and that government agencies were intervening all too enthusiastically in claiming property for the state (Smena 1991/1, 2; 1991/3, 2). A second open letter from the YCS to the Slovak Premier (Carnogursky) demanded stronger youth representation on the board of directors of the Foundation that had been established to disburse the property and resources of the Communist youth organisations - with some success, in that it produced a delay in the presentation of draft proposals for the organisation of the Foundation (Smena 1991/3). Further YCS public declarations rejected the proposed legislation for funding youth associations on the grounds of inadequacy and accused the government of obstructing property transfer (Smena 1991/4, 2, 1991/5, 4). In all, the YCS proved itself to be a negotiating partner of real consequence for the government during this phase of reconstruction and managed to ensure that in some fields at least, on official advisory bodies - such as the Youth Work Council - YCS representatives are equal in number to those appointed by the government. By 1992, the Slovak Vice-Premier was stating publicly that no Minister of Education could now afford to take decisions in the face of opposition from the YCS and that the YCS itself was inclined to underestimate its influence and power (Porubjak 1992: 3). For its part, the YCS feared that unless its voice and participation in government policy decision-making were to be institutionalised, youth representatives could lose any influence they had gained if elections changed the balance of party political power. The legal provisions made in this respect during 1991/2 did indeed prove to be vital following the June 1992 elections, after which the YCS lost its political supporters on the change in government, since they guaranteed a continuing channel of representation and communication through the ministerial council on youth issues. Nevertheless, in October 1992 the statutes of the Childhood and Youth Foundation were amended to reduce YCS representation on the executive committee from half to one third of its members. Bitter disappointment was expressed, unsurprisingly enough. What we see in this process, then, has been an initial phase of assertion-distinction on the part of youth associations; an interim phase of power-consolidation as represented by the political position won by the YCS; and a current phase of stagnation-reversal, in which government attempts to readjust the balance of power relations between state and civil society back into its own favour and to regulate policy and financial administration more 'conventionally'.

Young People and Social Transformation in Slovakia

265

The funding of youth activities If the allocation of public funding for youth associations is grounded in the principle of supporting their activities, the question becomes: what are they doing and for whom? In 1991, virtually all the available funds (some 120 million Crowns) were distributed to the central bodies of civic youth associations. However, since formal organisations of this kind cover less than a fifth of Slovak young people (in terms of membership), it seemed evident that it is unjust to pass on the funding in this way. In 1992 a new system was adopted, under which 28% of the total resources available are distributed to youth associations for their administrative/institutional costs and the remainder (92 million Crowns) are allocated by competition on the basis of applications to mount activities and provide services. The allocation of these funds is also subject to formulae that ensure a balanced distribution for nationwide activities and regional/local initiatives. Subsequent negotiations with the YCS ensured that the committees judging the applications would include youth representatives and that a proportion of funds would be reserved for projects that did not readily fit into specified priority themes and activities. The YCS was unable, however, to secure agreement for the establishment of a self-governing system of competition for and distribution of public funding for youth activities; it can decide only upon the allocation of those funds transferred for the administrative/institutional needs of its affiliated institutions. One of the difficulties with a competition system of funding allocation is that only those applications which are submitted can be considered. We have found that the distribution of applications (and thus funding allocations) have not necessarily reflected the urgency of social problems as experienced by young people, but rather have responded to the formal quality of the application itself. This means, for example, that activities designed to protect young people against drug abuse have not been funded to the extent that they ideally should have been, because sufficient applications in this area have not been made. There is, in fact, a definite dissonance between the activities that youth associations see as important and those that the population at large view as worthy of public subsidy. If we return to our most recent attitude survey (Institute of Sociology 1994) we find that our adult respondents are most likely to see activities that aim to protect young people from social risks such as drugs, alcohol, prostitution, delinquency and criminality as acceptable (a third of respondents do so). Activities that work to protect the environment and monuments receive the support of about 18% of adult respondents; one tenth support activities for the young unemployed to help them to find jobs; and a similar proportion are prepared to support leisure-oriented activities for young people. All else receives much less support from adults. In particular, projects to support young enterprise are found acceptable by merely 2% of respondents; and only 3% accept international contact and exchange programmes for young people. This does not mean that funding decisions should follow adult public opinion, but simply points to the sources of conflict and disagreement that are bound to arise in this context. In reality, in 1993 21% of funding was allocated to international contact and exchange programmes, 45% to leisure-oriented

266

L. Machàcek

activities. 23% of funding was allocated to activities designed to protect and support young people at risk. Youth associations, too, face demands to be flexible and to modify their activities and services in the light of experience. It is inevitable that periods of innovation and rejuvenation will be followed by periods of consolidation and institutionalisation, in which initial élan must be accompanied by reliability in responding to the needs of wider groups than those who have been active in the first flush of change. In Slovakia, it has become apparent that some youth issues and groups have not found a place in structural and policy concerns - and this applies especially both to marginalised youth and to employed youth/young people in vocational training. In effect, one might posit that both the government and the youth associations are pursuing broadly similar aims, but that the two sides differ in their assessments of the extent to which the associations themselves are competent and responsible for the tasks that need to be done and the services that must be provided to young people. This conflict can, once more, be reformulated in terms of the relations between state and civil society: where are the frontiers, what is the permeability between the two? If the YCS makes a bid to take over duties and responsibilities conventionally attributed to the state - for example, allocation of funding for youth work and services - then questions are bound to be asked about the adequacy of representativeness of civic youth associations. In other words, is the YCS an independent and objective interpreter of their interests (which is not to imply that the state necessarily is so)?

Conclusions Whilst youth continues to be viewed by adult public opinion as problematic and potentially dangerous, the contemporary youth movement is becoming officially more institutionalised and in practical terms increasingly marginalised from the centre of social and political life in Slovakia. The YCS and the government are drifting further apart, but children and young people themselves benefit no more than they ever did. The marginalisation of childhood and youth is rooted, in my view, in the totalitarian traditions of our culture - both brown and red varieties. Both systems placed youth questions within a single-party framework, in which youth was politicised and unified in the service of narrow ideological aims. The image of youth - politically and publicly - was that of a historically significant subject imbued with a social mission. The problem is ultimately not one of marginalisation but of traditionalism, which jars painfully with our passive expectation for collectivist revolutionary action on the part of contemporary youth movements. Contemporary transformation and modernisation processes do not, however, leave youth - as an ideological category - untouched. The homogenous social group with a mission becomes a social aggregate of individuals passing through a specific period on the life course - and no more than that. Individualisation, in this sense, is a prerequisite of modernisation in post-communist countries (Velev 1994).

Young People and Social Transformation in Slovakia

267

Active citizenship demands, of course, not simply the recognition of personal aims, but equally communicative competence and engagement. Slovak youth associations were able, in the early 1990s, to unify and to manifest their engagement in order to secure political support and public funding for their organisation and activities. At the same time, their ability to articulate the specific needs and interests of all young people was underdeveloped - for example, in the fields of education, training and housing policies. Youth association representatives have not only drifted away from the government, but have also begun to become detached from young people's concerns in a way that renders them unable to reflect changes into policy debates and discussions. Once people's representatives are admitted into the state apparatus, they are at danger of distancing themselves from the citizenry: "[...] there is a [...] massive demand everywhere for political participation and dialogue, [but] little capacity for collective action and the ideological formulation of such demands" (Touraine 1993, 426). The YCS is a collective actor and has a responsibility for protecting young people in a period of radical transformation; writing and analysing its natural history has a significant sociological purpose within the study of contemporary modernisation processes. Slovakia is a small country - but, as one recent commentator has concluded (Stafseng 1994), if taken good care of, the youth field is one of the most promising and exciting in Europe.

The Politics of Childhood, Children's Rights and the UN Convention Heinz Sünker

Introduction Contemporary western European societies, in particular here, the Federal Republic of Germany, are marked by a series of sharpening contradictions, at the levels both of social institutions and social relations. Essentially and of particular relevance for the theme of this chapter, these comprise processes of both social integration and segregation/marginalisation, centralisation and regionalionalisation, démocratisation and expertisation (Beck 1986; Bowles and Gintis 1987; Wexler 1987; Bermann 1988; Lash 1991). They prompt us to reconsider the questions of the politics of childhood and children's rights under the conditions of contemporary European social change. This paper will look at some aspects of the civil rights of children with special regard to the UN-Convention on the Rights of the Child of 1989. Current debates about a politics of childhood may include explicit controversies - for example, should we aim to develop a politics for children or with children (Sünker 1991a; Lüscher and Lange 1992, Therborn 1993). Nevertheless, they share a common commitment to advance the interests of children as an aspect of civilisatory progress. This commitment is to be understood as a continuation of a programmatic first comprehensively formulated by Ellen Key (1978/1902) in The Century of the Child and as a continued response to empirical portrayals of the unsatisfactory circumstances of children's lives (such as Otto Kanitz's 1925 classical study The Proletarian Child in Bourgeois Society). More recent, interdisciplinary discourses are especially interested to explore how far changing social relations have led to a change in the nature of'childhood', and how far the considerable changes in children's living conditions and lifestyles can be attributed to processes of social development (Elder et al. 1993; Markefka and Nauck 1993; Sünker 1991a; Büchner 1990; Melzer and Sünker 1989).1 Theoretically and socio-politically, these issues and debates are grounded in the 'individualisation thesis', which draws together the elements of social change processes and indicates the nature of the contradictions these are producing (Beck, op.cit.). In research terms, they have lead to renewed consideration of the difficulties posed by empirical study of children's lives and lifestyles (Sünker 1993). Taken together, all these

270

H. Siinker

discussions point to the necessity for a 'dual' approach: childhood and children are anchored in a variety of forms of family life, but childhood and children equally occupy (or should occupy) a distinct positioning in their own right (both sociologically and politically). Understandably there are conflicts between political (and administrative), theoretical and political positions, the background to which is multi-faceted. In very traditional terms it concerns an image of childhood in which childhood is defined as a deficient transitional stage in the process of becoming an adult, and which, by traditional use of concepts such as 'care' and 'protection', reflects or avoids any far-reaching discussion of children's rights. The blue-print in relation to 'rights' is a particular model of adulthood, characterised by autonomy and performative competence. In political terms, this discussion was and is tied to conceptions of childhood as 'family childhood'. The 'refamilisation' of youth welfare (a position reflected both in the 7th German Youth Report and in the argument that new legislation concerning children and youth is essentially family law), may be seen as an outcome of this policy orientation. The consequences of taking such a position can be seen, for example, in a 1989 German government statement to the 20th European Conference of Family Ministers, which addressed the topic of the childcare role of family services: In the Federal Republic of Germany, the family, as always, plays the leading role in childcare. It is true that, as in all Member States of the European Community, a system of public education and development in primary and secondary schools has arisen alongside the family. Nevertheless, childhood still remains a 'family childhood'. Children grow up as they always have in families, and it is there that they go through the experiences which determine their future lives. Certainly childhood has changed in the sense that with the modernisation and industrialisation of our society, paid work has been separated from the family and no longer features in children's lives. Childhood has attained a social status with its own rights and duties. The necessary experiences and skills are passed on to children. (Bericht der Bundesregierung 1989, 1; see also Therborn 1993, 243).

The opposite position recognises the anchoring of children in multiple forms of family life, as well as the fragility of the status of children in family and society - precisely as a result of social changes and their consequences for the lives of children - and bases the rights of children on human and civil rights in the modern welfare state (Verhellen 1992; Siinker 1991a; Karsten and Siinker 1990). This is best expressed in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, as Elisabet Nasman has commented on the convention: A citizen's freedom and right established in constitutional law apply, at least in principle, to children as well as to adults, unless it is otherwise stated. This kind of legislation usually regulates citizens' protection against encroachments on the person by the state in the form of both legislation and actions by its agencies. The view of children as being formally on equal footing with other citizens has been debated, and has, in recent decades, gradually penetrated other legislation and the practices of various public agencies dealing with children. The application of some general civil rights to children in a United nations (UN) convention on children's rights demonstrates that this view is not universally accepted; one of the main reasons seems to be the dual perspective of children as individual citizens, on the one hand, and as dependents, on the other.

The Politics of Childhood. Children's Rights and the UN Convention

271

Looking back at the earlier international statements on children's rights, one can see a clear development from an emphasis on protection of a dependant to increasing emphasis on the civil rights of the individual (see the declaration on children's rights of the League of Nations in 1924 and of the United Nations in 1959 and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of a Child of 1989). The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child is a worldwide attempt to give states public responsibility for children's lives, their civil rights, and their rights to special services and protection because of their status as children (NSsman 1994,167-168, see Newell 1991).

F r o m r e p r e s e n t a t i o n to p a r t i c i p a t i o n T h e discourse o n children's rights is grounded, on the o n e hand, in terms o f the social p r o c e s s e s that respond to the problem o f ensuring the social integration o f younger generations into the polity. Here, the key concept and instrument is that o f civil rights and the modalities o f a c c e s s to these. On the other hand, it is grounded in the concept and practice o f distinct and explicit children's rights as an element o f democratic social development and as an extension o f the classical debate over educational means and ends (Horn 1967). Specifically: is the extension o f general human rights to children a necessary c o m p o n e n t o f establishing a genuinely democratic society? T h e official position is described by Adam Lopotka, Chairman o f the U N Commission o n the preparation o f the U N Convention on the Rights o f the Child: Under the inspiration of UN1CEF, the World Summit for Children was held in New York on September 29-30, 1990. It was attended by 71 heads of states or governments, and 13 others acceded to the documents adopted by the Summit later on. The Summit convened to undertake a joint commitment and to make an urgent universal appeal to give every child a better future. The Summit adopted two documents of vital importance: the World Declaration on the survival, protection and development of children, and the Plan of Action for implementing this Declaration. It covers the period until the year 2000. In the declaration the Summit participants stated that the Convention on the Rights of the Child provided a new opportunity to make respect for children's rights and welfare truly universal. They also stated that the well-being of children required political action at the highest level. The Summit participants made a solemn commitment to give high priority to the rights of children, to their survival and to their protection and development. They committed themselves to work to promote the earliest possible implementation of the Convention. They also considered it necessary to encourage information about children's rights worldwide, taking into account the distinct cultural and social values in different countries (1993, 131-132). Maijatta Bardy's comments, o n the other hand, highlight the political potential o f the U N Convention which might lead precisely to a challenge to the official policy: The Convention on the Rights of the Child could serve as a political tool of current international and national interests for the redesigning of knowledge on and with children. The Convention may be read as an eclectic international document calling attention to the combination of 'provision - protection participation'; programming the three 'Ps' in the strategy of the implementation is a challenge. Provision calls the attention to the distribution of the resources between the generations. Protection might take place within the socially extended parenting. Participation demands social space for children. It will be interesting to see whether the document succeeds in promoting the transformative generation pattern (1993, 22).

272

H. Siinker

Attempts to structure and determine the content of the Convention through the 'three Ps1 (protection - provision - participation) or through 'entitlements, protections and affirmative freedoms' (Brieland and Korr 1992, 3), indicate the need to give the Convention some substance, especially by adding a more precise political foundation and thus indicating the direction to be taken by implementation strategies. 2 If one looks closely at the 'three Ps', it becomes apparent that a number of other concerns underlie these apparently straightforward concepts.

- Protection: This clearly is based on a traditional approach to childhood, without either addressing or resolving the issue of the coercion built into protection and care} The task also remains of developing new models and concepts which go beyond being either paternalistic or patriarchal (van Krieken 1991; Plewig 1994; Steindorff 1994). - Provision: In the first instance, this too has a traditionalflavour. In relation to children's circumstances in the 'Third World' and the question of satisfying 'basic needs', it evidently remains an important element.4 As far as western societies are concerned, the element of provision can be approached through the concept of the welfare state and social policy practice. The key relationship here is seen to be that of children and poverty/paternal unemployment (Siinker 1991b). Provision might also be approached via education, and can thus be viewed within the framework of education and youth welfare policies (5 th German Youth Report 1980). - Participation: This element is linked, firstly, with positions concerned with the theory and practice of democracy, expressed ideas such as the Children's Parliament. Such ideas seek to strengthen democratic relations oriented towards the society as a whole and its developmental potential (Wiebusch 1992). It is also linked with positions which can only imagine an improvement in children's living conditions through their own active participation, aiming to resolve the question of the relationship between dependency and autonomy (Qvortrup 1990). The understanding of the child as a legal subject, which also affects in a decisive way the quality of the adult-child relationship, is fundamental to this perspective: Should the child be seen as a legal subject or as an object of desire and power? "Should the child be regarded as a being which should be protected by society or as a partner with full rights ofparticipation? ... The rights of children to protection and welfare do not affect the power relations between adults and children, but their rights to freedom do. The concrétisation of the rights of children will thus require complete commitment" (Verhellen 1992, 99; cf. also Siinker 1993, 97-98).f At this juncture, it is useful to return to the distinction noted earlier between a politics for children and a politics with children. The paternalism of the classical ideology of the family together with the concepts of protection and maturity conflicts with many articles in the UN Convention on Children's Rights. This is particularly evident with regard to the endorsement of the view that children should participate actively in matters that affect them. In other words, the Convention gives a measure of official recognition to the idea

The Politics of Childhood, Children's Rights and the UN Convention

273

that children should be involved in decisions concerning their well-being and living conditions. The Convention by no means promotes any kind of children's rights radicalism, of course (Verhellen 1993). At the same time, the views it endorses do, on occasion, prompt theoretical questions about childhood as a social category or phenomenon - for example, discussions about the subjectivity of the child. And clearly, the Convention's articles also prompt debate over policies relevant to children - for example, the extent to which these promote participation as opposed to representation. This question of children's participation in matters that affect them operates at a number of levels and in a variety of constellations. Taken together, the debate moves between participation in the sense of freedom of expression and participation in the sense of decisionmaking relevant to a child's or children's well-being. The starting point for all debates on the question of participation is Article 12, which links the child's developmental stage with the right to express her/his opinion in all matters affecting her/him. The formulation of Article 13 discourages restrictive interpretations in this respect: "The child shall have the right to freedom of expression; this right shall include the freedom to seek, and receive information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, either orally, in writing or in print, in the form of art, or through any media of the child's choice". Further Articles 15 and 17, call for the right to freedom of assembly as well as freedom of access to sources of information. Article 27 demands "the right of every child to a standard of living adequate for the child's physical, mental, spiritual, moral and social development" 6 Article 23 speaks of the right of a disabled child to a worthwhile life, to individual development and social integration. Further practical points about participation are made in Articles 28 and 31, which refer to the right to an education with a view to equality of opportunity, as well as the significance of participation in cultural and artistic life. This relates to Article 30, which emphatically calls for the rights of children who are part of an ethnic, religious or linguistic minorities to stick to their own culture, religion and language. These articles do not simply specify on emancipatory minimum, but also formulate a challenge in terms of the politics of childhood. The discussion of the requirements and possibilities for the implementation of the UN Convention means identifying answers to the questions 'who', 'where' and 'how': this affects politics, social institutions, and everyday life and their social actors. To date, it cannot be said that childhood and youth welfare organisations have reached a clear idea about how they might respond to the issues raised by the UN Convention and the debates it has pinpointed or accentuated. Nevertheless, there have been some initial attempts to specify how we could proceed, in which fields of action, and within what kinds of political perspective. For example, the British Children's Rights Development Unit has put forward far-reaching suggestions about how to implement and advance. These terms of the convention include proposals to:

- monitor Government progress in making the Convention known and in preparing its two-year report to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child;

274

H. Stinker

- ensure that the principles of Article 12 and the participation of children and young people is kept to the fore ; - promote the Convention to a wide range of governmental, voluntary and professional groups both directly and through contributing to conferences, seminars and publications and the media; - convene consultative forums to discuss the implications of the convention, establish priorities and targets, encourage action by others, and identify and assist in the launching of other groups; - develop and maintain a source of information on current and impending changes in legislation, policy or practice for which the Convention has some relevance and potential impact and act as a focal point for sharing and disseminating information on issues relevant to the Unit's aim; - undertake, commission, co-ordinate or support research necessary to the Unit's aims and write and commission briefing papers. The German discussion, for its part, has seen demands for a general shift of policies and for legislative change, for example, by amending the Constitution to include the concept and practice of children's rights more explicitly (Baer 1990). The German Children's Welfare Association (Deutsches Kinderhilfswerk), in common with the parliamentary Children's Commission and the German Youth Association (Deutscher Bundesjugendring), have called for the securing of children's rights in the Constitution and for a 'Children's Plan' at national level.7 What is emphasised nationally and internationally is the significance of governmental accountability, especially through the supervision of official policies by NGOs. The demands refer to the following areas. - participatory rights for children in institutions; - rights of association; - definitions of child welfare in connection with the participation of children in treatment of cases of neglect, etc. by parents and educators; - violence against children (sexual violence, child pornography; corporal punishment as a basis for hindrance of child self-determination); - health/environment/genetics; - social security/poverty; - migrants, child refugees; - child labour; - public education: extension of child care as an improvement in conditions of socialisation; abolition of three-tiered school system; - constitutional safe-guarding of children's rights together with participatory arrangements in political institutions; - withdrawal of objections to ratification. Beyond the attempt to influence the development of the legal system and legislation there are suggestions which could assist an implementation of the convention in wider social and political fields:

The Politics of Childhood, Children's Rights and the UN Convention

275

- use of the European Commission Childcare Network (Therborn 1993, 243): 'continuously monitoring the situation of and the policies towards children'; - use of the results of the European Centre for Social Welfare international research Project 'Childhood as a Social Phenomenon' and 'Children at Risk' (Eurosocial 1989; Qvortrup 1990, 1993): in order to strengthen childhood research and international exchange of new developments, experiences and results; - establishment of the Commission for the Rights of the Child as proposed by the German Parliament (AWO 1992, 5); Besetzung des Ausschusses fur 'Rechte des Kindes' bei der UNO auch auf Vorschlag der Regierung der BRD (Arbeiterwohlfahrt 1992, 5); - establishment of an Ombudsman for the Rights of the Child (Verhellen 1993; Násman 1993) - international conferences on 'children's ombudswork' have taken place and are plannedfor Gent 1987, Amsterdam 1992, Costa Rica 1995; - establishment of children's parliaments; - creation of special children's officers in youth welfare offices (Eichholz 1991).

Conclusions Turning legal provisions into effective political, social and institutional practice demands a great deal of conceptual work, work that still, for the most part, remains to be done. At least as far as the Federal Republic of Germany is concerned, interest in the conceptualisation of a politics of childhood is guided by the argument that the further démocratisation of society depends vitally on the democratic potential of the younger generation(s). The discussion about the politics of childhood and children's rights can then be understood as a social scientific reformulation of the classic pedagogic position, exemplified in Hegel's lecture on the 'Right to Education' (Wigger 1993) and, in Kant's words: "Children ought to be educated, not for the present, but for a possibly improved condition of man in the future; that is, in a manner which is adapted to the idea of humanity and the whole destiny of man" (1899, 14). Kant's programmatic injunction foresees a crucial task for educators, formal and nonformal: how to promote young people's active participation in democratic decisionmaking processes. Under current circumstances, implementing this injunction is of more urgency than ever. In a contemporary formulation of this injunction, Bowles and Gintis have written: "Because the growth and effectiveness of democratic institutions depend on the strength of democratic capacities, a commitment to democracy entails the advocacy of institutions that promote rather than impede the development of a democratic culture. Further, because learning, or more broadly, human development, is a central and lifelong social activity of people, there is no coherent reason for exempting the structures that regulate learning - whether they be schools, families, neighbourhoods, or work-places from the criteria of democratic accountability and liberty" (1987, 205).

276

H. Stinker

Notes 1 An overview of recent contributions to German research into childhood can be found in Chisholm (1992b) and Ktthnel (1992). 2 Cantwell (1993) provides an important clue for the interpretation of the 'three Ps': "Whilst not, perhaps, of resounding importance in practical terms, it was nonetheless significant. Over and above the controversy surrounding appropriateness of the word 'survival' was the fact that, whether intentionally or not, 'survival' immediatly looks as though it is an absolute priority, the key right at the top of a hierarchical listing. Of course, 'survival' is necessary, but it is certainly not sufficient, and a main object of the '3 Ps' exercise was precisely to highlight the intrinsically equal importance of each 'P' for child survival and development, even if ad hoc priority had to be given to one or other in certain specific circumstances" (op. cit., 122). 3 Interesting is Therborn's thesis that the idea of child-welfare historically followed that of prevention of cruelty to animals (1993, 14). The problems involved in the use of the concept 'social control' are discussed by van Krieken (1991, 3-30). 4 Article 4 of the UN Convention also requires international cooperation to improve children's living conditions (Newell 1991, 15). 5 Also important are considerations of the relation between legal status and children's development processes, as well as the structure of relations between parents and children (Reinicke 1989, 12, 20, 100, 108; Dietze 1989). 6 This formulation is reminiscent of Johann Galtung's definition of structural violence: "Violence arises when people are influenced so that their actual somatic and spiritual development is inferior to their potential development" (1975, 9). 7 See: DKHW press release 30.04.92; Deutscher Bundesjugendring 1992, 5; Catholic Youth Congregation press release 9.1.92.

Forum

Challenges for Childhood and Youth Policy in European Context Manuela du Bois-Reymond The conference Growing Up in Europe was the first occasion on which social and educational researchers into childhood and youth from so many countries - from Finland to Greece, from Portugal to Russia - came together both to exchange ideas and information and to consider these in relation to policy questions in the light of post-1989 European communication and integration. Those present represented the interests of many millions of children and young people by describing and analysing their lives, their values and their prospects. The discussions that evolved as the meeting listened to one account after another began to construct an intricate image of the highly differentiated shapings and effects of the shock-like modernisation processes taking place all over Europe today, if in varying combinations and velocities. The conference closed with an open forum discussion, to which the citizens of Halle were invited, whose aim was to consider and formulate concrete demands on European policymaking in those fields most relevant for the quality of children's and young people's lives. The forum participants were Manuela du Bois-Reymond (University of Leiden and moderator), Irene Bruckner (provincial government spokesperson and ombudsperson for children's matters in Saxony-Anhalt), Lynne Chisholm (University of Marburg), Vladimir Dubsky (Institute of Childhood and Youth, Ministry of Childhood, Youth and Sports, Prague), Maria-Eleonora Karsten (University of Liineberg), Hans-Uwe Otto (University of Bielefeld and Chairperson of the Ninth (1994) German Youth Report Commission) and Burkart Sellin (CEDEFOP - European Centre for the Development of Vocational Training, Berlin). The forum participants took the unanimous view that European policy-making relevant to children and young people continues to suffer from underdevelopment and fragmentation. Fundamentally, young people are seen as problems and children are but appendages of their parents and families. Yet contemporary childhood and youth researchers underline that these life phases have become independent in character and that children and young people exercise considerable competence in planning and making sense of their own lives and futures - indeed, they are increasingly expected to so by

278

Forum

adults, both in their families and in the public sphere. Politicians and policy-makers should take these realities of children's and young people's life circumstances more seriously.

These contradictions lead to the first demand: 1. An enlightened and efficient policy concerning children and young people is only imaginable and practicable as an integrated policy that rises above

segmented

ministerial politics; this type of ministerial politics has deteriorated to a system of commissioners and representatives. Youth policy must be changed from a problem policy to a policy of perspectives. This also means that short-term and instant-effect project funding must be abandoned, as it serves more for the legitimation of politicians than it is intended to be structurally effective. The much-discussed 'disinterest in politics' of the young generation is seen as less pronounced by those directly involved in childhood and youth research, by educationalists and by practitioners than it is by politicians: children and young people are very interested indeed in the organisation of the worlds in which they live, but they see themselves to have (accurately) no influence whatsoever on local politics, neither at school, nor in the areas where they live, play and carry out their activities.

This discrepancy leads to two further demands: 2. Local politicians must search more actively for possibilities of involving children and young people in decisions which affect their lives. Only then can political participation become more than an empty slogan. 3. School policy must fulfil its task of educating children and young people to be responsible citizens. School must become a field for activity and living, in which children are not preselected for different levels of qualification. The moratorium of education must not mean a moratorium of selection. Instead, children and young people must be taken seriously as reflective and active subjects. The problematic situation of a constantly widening gap between 'winners' and 'losers' in modern societies marred by structural mass unemployment, one which is currently intensely discussed in social science and politics, provokes doubts about the current definition of competence and qualification with which today's younger generations are confronted.

In its place, we demand: 4. School and other socialisation agencies and spheres must accept a new understanding of competence and qualification, which has the aim of widening and broadening the horizon of human an cultural resources instead of merely creating the future work force. The race of higher and higher educational certificates is an obstacle to such a new understanding. This race can only be stopped if the educational system, which

Forum

279

predestines those who receive 'only' a basic education to be society's losers, is reformed. New profiles of competence with cultural and social components must be created. 5. As part of the European integration process, the idea of European schools must be more widely pursued, where children and young people have the opportunity to concretely experience 'Europe' and the manifold European ways of living and learning. To demand and expect young people to adopt more mobile lifestyles, in education, training and work, makes sense only on the basis of concrete experiences. 6. Counteracting the destruction of acquired qualifications (credential inflation) is particularly important in the area of politics where children and young people are concerned. In today's situation, it is cynical to discharge educators, teachers and social workers, thereby pushing them into unemployment. This practice only reinforces that very 'disinterest in politics' which annoys politicians so much about the young generation. 7. Politicians must learn to tell their young and future voters the truth, instead of taking refuge behind opportunistic election promises they know they will not be able to keep. Educators and parents know very well that circumstances and standards of living are not balancing out as quickly as promised between 'East and West'. Young people must be prepared for this social situation. Research reports repeatedly underline that many young people retain relatively optimistic views of the future despite difficult material circumstances and economic prospects. However, in the battle for a job and for a secure existence, this optimism can easily turn into an attitude of ruthlessly elbowing weaker competitors out of the way. Frustration over legitimate hopes for the future leads to extreme attitudes and actions. Hence: 8. Politicians involved in youth matters and pedagogues must prevent a situation in which social divisions into potential losers and winners begins early on in life. In particular here, they must work towards a policy which makes possible a redistribution in infrastructural facilities of children and young people. European youth, child and family research shows that the consequences of individualisation, marginalisation and pluralisation make uniform conceptualisations of childhood, family and adolescence no longer plausible. At the same time, our maps of children's and young peoples' lives and values remain very patchy. Therefore and finally: The Growing Up in Europe conference must not remain an exception, but should act as a model for mounting similar conferences, on a biannual basis and held in different European countries. This requires an assured funding basis - but equally, such regular meetings would act as a focus for the development of a European-integrated childhood and youth research that can make continuing contributions to policy formulation and evaluation.

280

Forum

Perspectives for Child and Youth Oriented Policy in the FRG

Maria-Eleonora Karsten In the F R G alone, two million children live in manifest poverty; the proportion of children and young people in poverty are once more on the rise. Under these circumstances, childhood and youth policy as a taskfield becomes in itself problematic: what is its selfimage and what does it see as its field of action? The cross-sectional field of childhood and youth policy has long been caught in a dilemma: it must cope both with a very wide task spectrum and with a negotiation position characterised by ad hoc crisis intervention and splintered policy competences. As far as the F R G is concerned, the recent history of policy development has been, since the 1960s, one of a differentiation of policy fields. Successive phases of self-definition and political implementation released the development of youth policy in the 1990s. These policy developments were accompanied by parallel spurts of growth and development in social

research

into

youth,

gender

and

childhood;

gradually,

demand

for

and

establishment of spokespersons and ombudspersons for young people, women and children followed. This new 'infrastructure' for dealing with policy matters created new modes of access to and perspectives on action to promote equal opportunities and problem-solving measures. Valuable as all these innovations have been, they too have their price: the tendency to lose sight of the connections between children's, young people's and women's lives and the policies formulated in favour of the circumstances and needs of each. In turn, these increasingly area-specific institutions and actions have entered into competition with each other and pursue their particular interests egoistically. In consequence, it has become more and more difficult to work in an integrated way towards an

appropriate

conceptualisation of the nature and scope of the tasks involved. Such conceptualisation is, however, a crucial tool for critical reflection and evaluation of current practice, and points to the view that child oriented policy must constitute part of a social politics of forms of life organisation, which must be closely links with a society-oriented politics that occupies a central position in the concerns of the polity. Instead, w e can clearly observe an 'additive multiplication 1 of policy measures and activities during the 1980s, which effectively produces an ultimately fragmented and disoriented 'busy-ness'. In the FRG, for example, youth services have seen an explosion of social support services and extra-curricular education and leisure activities working within a myriad of institutional and programme funding arrangements - a process that has accelerated still more since the latest legislative reform of these services in 1991. The practical and economic consequences of reunification have, nevertheless, prompted the beginnings of a rethink in these respects. New-style youth services centres have begun to experiment with networking and integrative service provision, with the twin aims of responding more holistically to young people's lives and of using more efficient problemtargeted ways.

Forum

281

On the Young Generation's Situation in the Transformation of Czech Society

Vladimir Dubsky The situation of Czech youth after four years of substantial changes in their own society can be characterised in the following way:

- by their attitude towards economic reforms; - by their relationship toward the developing political system; - by their wishes for the future. Since the beginning of the changes, a great majority of young people in the Czech Republic have shown a high degree of approval of the transition from the centrally planned and directed national economy to market economy. The differing opinions between different groups of young people merely concerned the speed of this transformation and questions of social security. Problems young Czechs have experienced and still face are connected with the 'great transition': unemployment, stagnation or decline of the standard of living, and the growing rate of crime in many fields of social life. Unemployment in Czechia affects mainly 18- to 40-year-olds but the total unemployment rate is only approximately 4%, thanks to the specific conditions of the current transformation process, and has therefore not yet become a serious problem for Czech young people. Inflation and rising living costs have, however, resulted in a decline in the standard of living, which mainly affects two social groups: old-age pensioners and young families i.e. young people aged 20 - 25 who are married/cohabiting and have children. Young people fully support the political changes that have taken place and the civil rights progress that has gone along with these changes. What they treasure most is freedom of opinion and freedom to travel - by the early 1990s, over half of young Czechs were taking trips abroad, especially to the FRG and to Austria. At home, the vast majority are in favour of the process of political renewal which has brought the establishment of the democratic and constitutional state. This does not mean, however, that they uncritically applaud at all turns: whilst they place considerable trust in the elected government, they are much more wary about the Parliament, whose actions are viewed as dilettantish and incompetent and whose members are suspected of abuse and corruption in public office. In December 1993, opinion poll results showed two thirds of young people to be dissatisfied with the country's political situation. Young people concur, too, with older age groups in the view that (sharply rising) crime rate represents the new Republic's most pressing problem. On the other hand, fewer young people today are prepared to commit themselves personally to politics as a sphere of activity. Peace, an intact environment and personal health continue - as in the past - to be values to which young Czechs are most strongly attached, whereas the values of private life (love, life partner, family, children, friends) are

282

Forum

currently gaining in relative significance. As far as their hopes for the future are concerned, most young people now want to live in a democratic market economy and in contrast to older generations - retain confidence and optimism that the future will provide them with the conditions they need to build the kinds of lives they themselves want. They are in favour of passing legislation that enshrines citizens' rights and duties in these respects, which guarantees education and training opportunities, which promotes protection of the environment and adequate housing for young families. Childhood and youth policy in Czechia presently exist, however, in a field of tension. The principle of the paternalist state, in which all key areas of young people's lives are subject to regulation and control, comprises one pole; the other upholds the principle of individual responsibility, in which all young people are enjoined to make their own way by themselves. Current debates over educational system reform reflect these tensions, for example. But whatever the desirable approach to childhood and youth policy might be and here Czechia is in the process of trying to fit the experiences of established democratic European countries with the specificities of societies in transformation and reconstruction - there is one major obstacle: lack of resources. Integrating young people into the labour market, supporting associative life amongst young people, and assisting the underprivileged and marginalised towards improved opportunities and prospects are but three examples of the ways in which the state is concerned to make effort and progress - but realistically speaking, the majority of young people will be forced to rely mainly or exclusively on their own resources, energies and talents: policies by default rather than intention, we might conclude.

Forum

283

Problems and Challenges in Developing European Youth Policies

Lynne Chisholm Policy principles can only usefully begin from an appreciation of the cultural, economic and social circumstances in whose contexts such principles will be turned into practice. To what extent are policymakers at European level genuinely apprised of the circumstances under which young people in Europe are growing up? Has it become altogether more difficult to get a hold on the variety and complexity of those circumstances? Which kinds of issues hold centre stage at present, and how might they be more usefully approached? To begin with, whilst it is now commonly assumed that contemporary European societies find themselves in a phase of renewed and accelerated change, the processes involved remain very poorly understood, whether in research or policy terms. These processes tend to be described theoretically in terms of an intensifying and shifting dialectic between similarities and differences in life chances and risks between and within groups and regions in Europe, a part of the world that seems to understand itself as a kind of patchwork quilt that draws its unifying warmth from its constituent diversities. Rather badly sewn together on the whole, the European quilt presents itself as a draughty work of art - always a potential masterpiece, of course, but never quite plugging the gaps. At once enchanted and horrified by this eternal romantic vision of creative imperfection, we tend to fuzz over the sharp edges that divide the winners from the losers of social change. Often enough, this translates into a policy rhetoric of equality of opportunity, common interests and community that masks the simultaneous realities of systematic inequalities, conflicting interests and lack of mutual understanding. When we do acknowledge our differences, we are inclined to prefer the more comfortable level of identities and values, which are typically discussed as if these were divorced from the specific circumstances in which people live. Ann Phoenix's study of young Londoners' understandings of their identities as 'black', 'white' or 'mixed' British (or English?) citizens (reported in this volume) is an excellent example of the complexities involved in considering identities with circumstances, differences with similarities, equalities with inequalities. And that more or less all in one European place. The ways in which young 'winners and losers' are defined in and emerge from intercultural and comparative studies - both in the conference papers presented here and in the wider field of European childhood and youth studies Jens Qvortrup and I surveyed at the outset - are equally complex and manifold. If there is one thing all of us in Europe seem to have realised in the past five years or so, it is the multiple and fragmented quality of identity and circumstance. The danger of this realisation - especially in policy terms is that it leads to inertia or, worse, conscious opposition towards policy action designed to address the patent inequalities in life chances and risks under which young Europeans continue to grow up. If we are all disadvantaged in some way, then what are the grounds for action in whose favour? One of the most worrying aspects of this 'play off between

284

Forum

real or fabricated interest groups and factions is the political recontextualisation of the arguments in national(ist) terms. Amidst the undeniable rise in nationalist sentiment (and worse) amongst European populations - east and west, north and south - and including their younger generations, it seems worthwhile to recall that the majority of young Europeans everywhere support both democratic and humanitarian values and - given certain conditions - European integration processes (and not simply those of the European Community). Above all, young people in Europe want to hear no empty and false promises about what these processes may bring for them in their lives, and they do not want their particular ways of life to be flattened by an indiscriminating economic steamroller (posing currently as the Commission of the European Communities in the popular imagination). It is these kinds of anxieties, centred in the 'defensive' value perspectives discussed by Alessandro Cavalli in this volume, that push young Europeans along the path to distance and mistrust of European integration. Such anxieties receive nourishment from the realities with which young people are faced when they listen to what is expected of them in the future and - above all - experience the difficulties of responding to those expectations. Wherever we look - in the EU, in the postcommunist economies and societies, at the various European peripheries, in the old industrial cities and in the 'restructured' regions - we can see that young people are faced with rising demands on their levels of qualification and personal-social competence. Policy documents are full of exhortations and lists in these respects. But where do we find appropriate and sufficient policy support and programme facilitation? My own recent work in the field of vocational counselling and guidance provision across the European Community - from the point of view of young people's needs and demands as opposed to simply those of the societies in which they live - shows that there are gaping policy gaps here - in principle, in provision and in practice. But even where we might imagine optimal services in this area, the fact remains that we are looking at a 'system default' that has become chronic across Europe: educational achievement does not plausibly link up with labour market opportunities for ever wider and better qualified sectors of the young. The only sure-fire bet is that the unqualified and the least qualified are falling ever further behind into long-term marginalisation and exclusion. One informed commentator from Spain remarked recently - as part of the study referred to just now - that the Bilbao estuary is filled with probably the best qualified army of the young underemployed and unemployed in Europe. I am sure that numerous commentators from elsewhere in Europe will argue in exactly the same vein. Frankly, in such a context policy exhortations to become still more qualified and permanently 'always prepared' for mobility are more likely to produce jeers rather than applause, especially given the continuing and widespread intransigence of European government apparatus - and employers themselves, to perhaps a lesser extent - in the question of the mutual recognition of educational and vocational qualifications (despite the more positive view that Burkart Sellin from Cedefop quite rightly brings into the discussion here).

Forum

285

I want to list only three challenges for the development of European youth policies in the years to come, and I do so in full recognition of the fact that it is easy to throw down the gauntlet of principled challenge, and extraordinarily difficult to realise these challenges in the cut and thrust of politics and on the policymaking tightrope. I do so regardless. First: policy principles must begin by recognising the realities under which young people live, even when this implicitly reveals the shortcomings of the policy past. Such recognition includes taking young people's anxieties seriously, which, in turn, demands an explicit commitment to those values of an open, humanitarian society which many young people see as in the process of slipping away from us. Such a commitment requires an open acknowledgement of where we have thus far failed and concrete steps to rectify and improve these situations. Second, it is both unjust and useless to demand more of young people - in whatever respect - without providing a good quality, specifically appropriate and accessible infrastructure of information, advice, resources and opportunities that assist them to meet those demands. All such efforts will, in addition, remain unproductive as long as education and employment remained detached, in policy terms, from the concerns of family and private life. How on earth do we expect young women to take demands for labour market and residential mobility seriously when they cannot even bank on adequate childcare facilities in the localities in which they have grown up, know well and where their parents and relatives (the most reliable source of help here!) are most likely to be living? A unidimensional image of the highly qualified, multilingual androgynous and childless globetrotter as the prototype of the European citizen of the future is simply not practical. Young people know this to be so. But are policymakers (and employers) fully aware of it? One is tempted to suggest not. Third: young people are not necessarily alienated from politics. Rather, they do not see where their views and their situations might be taken politically seriously and acted upon in policy terms; they cannot 'recognise themselves' in the established labyrinth of influence and decisionmaking that the contemporary western democratic state presents itself as to its citizens. I do not think that older people feel much more at home in this labyrinth, but perhaps we have become more inured to it, which is no great recommendation. Everything I have said here is pretty much old hat, I am afraid. When are we going to admit it and design a newer model?

286

Forum

Youth Policy in the European Union Burkart Sellin In the past, European Community youth policy has been essentially limited to the following areas:

- promoting exchanges between young workers; - promoting cooperation between political organisations for young people within the framework of the European Youth Forum; - Promoting initial and ongoing training for young people and young adults with a view to helping them face the problems surrounding their transitions into the employment market - the PETRA programme, including the Youth for Europe exchange programme and the development of partnerships between training and employment initiatives for young people; - European Social Fund involvement in disadvantaged areas, to assist the vocational integration of young school leavers into the employment market and encourage the expansion of vocational counselling and vocational information services. This 'youth policy' was the expression of the Community's intention to prepare young people to face the new pan-European employment market, to increase their mobility and strengthen their identification with Europe. It was, in other words, an integral part of a newly emerging European educational, vocational and employment policy. In the wake of the first meeting (in 1992) of the Council of Ministers responsible for youth, the EC Commission established a Youth Section within the Task Force Human Resources, Education, Training and Youth. In November 1993 it submitted a proposal for a European Parliament and Council resolution to establish and fund 'Youth in Europe II1. The programme has a proposed (but at the time of going to press in mid-January 1995, not yet finally agreed) budget of 157 million ECU for a period of 5 years starting in 1995; its aims are, among others:

- the promotion of mobility among young people, of youth initiatives, of voluntary initiatives and practical training schemes; - the initial and ongoing training of organisers and experts in youth social and cultural work, including the organisations of seminars, meetings and ongoing training events; - the promotion of cooperation between institutional youth structures among Member States; - the promotion of cooperation with other countries; including those of central and eastern Europe; - the promotion and improvement of information for young people.

Forum

287

The principle according to which European Union measures are complementary and strictly additional to activities of the Member States applies to the area of youth policies as well as in the educational and vocational training area in general. In other words: there is and will be no centrally controlled European Union policy for children and young people. Initiatives for projects and programmes must therefore come from the various regions and Member States themselves; at a local level, educators, social workers and other participants must express their wishes and make proposals for projects with a European dimension. In contrast to other educational and vocational training programmes and to the subsidies that will be available from the EU structural fund from 1995 onwards, the youth programme itself is, of course, modest. It would, however, represent a first concrete step towards a move away from the one-sided and primarily economically-based view of the employment market in these other programmes and the development of more pedagogical and youth-centred activities. The current growth of racism and xenophobia as well as the increasing willingness of young people to use violence is diametrically opposed to the peaceful and social development of Europe. This should prod E U institutions into rethinking their commitment to do more for young people and their cultural, social and vocational integration. European cooperation and the trend towards European integration is viewed by many young people more as a threat than as a chance, particularly in view of the contemporary modernisation processes discussed so intensively at this conference, thus adding to their feeling of disorientation. Adults and public institutions have to do everything in their power to make sure that young people can take full advantage of the chances these trends offer. The section on youth in the recently published White Paper of the European Union on Growth, Competitiveness and Employment (CEC 1993b) does not have much to say about a comprehensive youth policy, as it primarily considers the economic dimension and leaves out social and/or educational dimensions. These dimensions should include, for example, the following questions. What skills should be transmitted to young people today, in view of the no longer purely economic challenges they have to face? How, in view of the growing problems in families and neighbourhoods and the challenges created by the flood of information, by individual competition and competitive decadence, can they be given the skills necessary to develop their identity, their self-confidence, their feeling of righteousness and their identification with the social conditions around them, all the while taking into consideration categories of solidarity, historical developments, changing career roles, the calling in question of the social positions of their parents and many adults in their environment and with the aim of shaping the future. The Green Paper, the European Commission's discussion paper on a common social policy (CEC 1993a), may also prepare more than to continue addressing the symptoms brought on by the negative effects of essential technical and economical patterns of action on perhaps higher quality levels. What skills do today's young people need in order to have a say in shaping and steering the modernisation process rather than being mere passive participants subjected to its

288

Forum

whims? Firstly, education and training must be re-oriented from the point of view of both contents and methods. Young people must be given the ability: - to develop their own ethics of morality, in other words, to learn to recognise what is right and what is wrong in their environment and in their society, and know how to get politically involved; - to acquire the technological skills they need, not only to use and understand modem tools, but also to be able to assess the social, psychological, and sometimes destructive effects of these tools in order to then participate in decisions on which products and production processes are good or bad; - to work toward acquiring ecological skills, with regard to caring for things, protecting natural resources, etc.; - to develop the perceptional skills necessary to assess their own identity in a social and cultural context and their own willingness to change, i.e. to take on new vocational or private roles for the realisation of their own projects, perhaps in order to avoid excessive pressure to conform; - to develop 'solidarisation skills' which would help them join forces with others who share a comparable identity or could potentially develop a comparable identity. Our educational and vocational training systems must open up to these additional tasks and develop these types of orientation skills more strongly vis-a-vis traditional cognitive and behavioural aims. Within the European context, for instance, it is anything but normal that young people from England or France, or more particularly young Turks or Poles, in Germany (or elsewhere in Europe) should have hardly any freedom to decide on the identity they wish for themselves. The language and culture of their immediate host environments are so dominant that these young people are at great risk of becoming disoriented due to marginalisation of their parents' language and culture of origin. Why shouldn't bilingual teaching be offered right from kindergarten, or partner language programmes at secondary level, so that German and French or Turkish can maintain or develop their double identity? Europe from below should be our aim: that means tolerance towards differences and steering away from any kind of rigid integration into the immediate environment. The possibilities young people may have of taking on a second or a third identity can thus remain open so that the young people concerned can then postpone decisions about their choice of identity to a later date, or be in a better position to take on yet other identities. This is the only way to positively influence mobility and multiculturality in Europe in such a way that it is not seen as a negative threat rather than as a positive challenge.

References

Abramson, P. R. and Inglehart, R. (1992): Generational Replacement and Value Change in Eight West European Countries. British Journal of Political Science, 22, 183-228 Adorno, T. W. (1973): Zum Verhältnis von Soziologie und Psychologie. In Adorno, T. W.: Aufsätze zur Gesellschaftstheorie und Methodologie. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp Alanen, L. (1992): Modern Childhood? Exploring the 'Child Question' in Sociology. Research Report 50. Jyväskylä: University of Jyväskylä Alanen, L. (1994): Gender and Generation: Feminism and the 'Child Question'. In Qvortrup, J. et al. (Eds.): Childhood Matters: Social Theory, Practice and Politics. Aldershot: Avebury, 27-42 Alderson, P. (1992): Rights of children and young people. In Coote, A. (Ed.): The Welfare of Citizens. Developing New Social Rights. London: IPPR/Rivers Oram Press Aleksic, J., Ule, M. and Vrcan, S. (1985): Polozaj, svest i ponasanje mlade generacije Jugoslavie. Beograd/Zagreb: CIDID, IDIS Alexander, J. (1994): Modernisation theory after 'the Transition'. Zeitschrift für Soziologie, 23, 3, 165-197 Almeida, J. F.(1993): I n t e g r a f o social e exclusäo social: algumas questöes. Anälise Social, 28, 4-5, 829-834 Altman, I. and Rogoff, B. (1987): World Views in Psychology: Trait, Interactional, Organismic and Transactional Perspectives. In Stokols, D. and Altman, I. (Eds): Handbook of Environmental Psychology. New York: John Wiley & Sons Ambert, A.-M. (1986): Sociology of Sociology: The Place of Children in North American Sociology. In Adler, Patricia and Adler, Peter (Eds ): Sociological Studies of Child Development, Vol. 1. Connecticut: JAI-Press Inc., 11-31 Ambert, A.-M. (1992): The Effects of Children on Parents. New York: The Haworth Press Ambrosius, G. and Hubbard, W. H. (1986): Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte Europas im 20. Jahrhundert. München: C.H. Beck Anderson, B. (1983): Imagined Communities. London: Verso. Anderson, B. A. (1987): The Life Course of Soviet Women Born 1905-1969. In Millar, J.-R. (Ed.): Politics, Work, and Daily Life in the USSR: A Survey of Former Soviet Citizens. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Andersson, B.-E. (1992): Effects of day-care on cognitive and socio-emotional competence of 13-year-old Swedish school children. Child Development, 63, 20-36 Andersson, B.-E. and Gunnarsson, L. (1990): Svenska smàbarnsfamiljer. Lund: Studentlitteratur Arbeiterwohlfahrt (1992): UN-Konvention über die Rechte des Kindes, Bonn, 6 October Ardig, A. (1993): Un approccio pluridimensionale alla valutazione della povertà: oltre il post-moderno. In Palumbo, M. (a cura di): Classi, disuguaglianza e povertà. Milano: F. Angeli Ariès, P. (1962): Centuries of Childhood. New York: Vintage Books Arlacchi, P. (1980): Mafia, contadini e latifondo nella Calabria tradizionale. Bologna: Il Mulino Arppe, T. (1986): Jean Budrillard - esittely. In Kotkavirta, J. and Sironen, E. (Eds.): Moderni/postmoderni. Jyväskylä: Tutkijaliitto Arrighi, G. and Piselli, F. (1985): Parentela, clientela e comunità. In Bevilacqua, P. and Placanica, A. (Eds.): La Calabria. Torino: Einaudi, 367-492 Arvidsson, H., Berntson, L. and Dencik. L. (1994): Modernisering och Välfard - om stat, individ och civilt samhälle i Sverige. Stockholm: City University Press Ashford, S. and Timms, N. (1992): What Europe Thinks. London: Dartmouth Publishing Company Avdela, E. (1986): What kind of jobs do women have? Dini, 2, 19

290

References

Badescu, I. and Minulescu, M. (1993): Tineretul si Atlasul Social al Romaniei. Geopolitica si Politicile in Domeniul Tineretului. [Youth and Social Atlas of Rumania. Geopolitics and Youth Policies.] Caiete Stiintifice 4, Bucuresti: Institutul de Cercetari Pentru Problemele Tineretului Baer, I. (1990): Verabschiedung des UN-Übereinkommens über die Rechte des Kindes im November 1989 in New York. Welche Änderungen des bundesrepublikanischen Rechts wären bei Ratifizierung der Konvention notwendig? Familie und Recht, 4, 192-199 Banks, M., Bates, I., Breakwell, G., Bynner, J., Emler, N., Jamieson, L. and Roberts, K. (1992): Careers and Identities. Milton Keynes: Open University Press Bardy, M. (1993): The Manuscript of the 100-Years Project. In Qvortrup, J. and Bauman, Z.: Soil, Blood and Identity. Sociological Review, 41, 675-701 Beck, U. (1986/1992): Risikogesellschaft. Frankfiirt/M.: Suhrkamp [Also published in English: Risk Society. London: Sage 1992] Beck, U., Giddens, A. and Lash, S. (1994): Reflexive Modernization. Politics, Tradition and Aesthetics in the Modern Social Order. Cambridge: Polity Press Becker, G. (1975): Human Capital. New York: Columbia University Press Behnken, I. (Ed.) (1990): Stadtgesellschaft und Kindheit im Prozeß der Zivilisation. Opladen: Leske + Budrich Behnken, I., du Bois-Reymond, M. and Zinnecker, J. (1989): Stadtgeschichte als Kindheitsgeschichte. Opladen: Leske + Budrich Bendit, R., Mauger, G. and von WolfTersdorff, C. (Eds.) (1993): Jugend und Gesellschaft. Deutschfranzösische Forschungsperspektiven. Baden-Baden: Nomos Benedict, R. (1938): Continuities and Discontinuities in Cultural Conditioning. Psychiatry, 1, 2, 161-167 Bengton, V. L. and Achenbaum, W. A. (1993): The changing contract across generations. Chicago/Berlin: de Gruyter Benthall, J. (1992a): A late developer? The ethnography of children. Anthropology Today, 8, 2, Iff Benthall, J. (1992b): Child-focused research. Anthropology Today, 8, 2, 23-25 Berger P., Berger, B. and Kellner, H. (1974): The Homeless Mind. Modernisation and Consciousness. New York: Vintage Books Berger, P. A. and Hradil, S. (Eds.) (1990): Lebenslagen, Lebensläufe, Lebensstile. Soziale Welt, Sonderband 7, Göttingen: Otto Schwartz Bericht der Bundesregierung (1989): Zur Vorbereitung auf die XX. Europäische Familienministerkonferenz. Bonn Berman, M. (1988): All That Is Solid Melts Into Air. The Experience of Modernity. New York: Penguin Bertelsen, O. (1991): Offentlig bornepasning. Socialforskningsinstitutet Rapport 91:4, Kebnhavn Bertram, H. (Ed.) (1991): Die Familie in Westdeutschland. Opladen: Leske + Budrich Bertram, H. (Ed.) (1992): Die Familie in den neuen Bundesländern. Stabilität und Wandel in der gesellschaftlichen Umbruchsituation. Opladen: Leske + Budrich Bevilacqua, P. (1985): Uomini, terre, economie. In Bevilacqua, P. and Placanica, A. (Eds ): La Calabria. Torino: Einaudi, 117-362 Bevilacqua,P. (1993): Breve storia dell'Italia meridionale. Roma: Donzelli Billig, M., Condor, S., Edwards, D„ Gane, M„ Middleton, D. and Radley, A. (1988): Ideological Dilemmas: A Social Psychology of Everyday Thinking. London: Sage Biorcio, R. and Segatti, P. (1992): Rapporti con la Politica e Atteggiamenti Culturali dei Giovani Europei. Milano: IARD, June Bjurek, H. (1992): Effektivitet och kvalitet i barnomsorgen - en Studie av daghem i Göteborgs kommun. Göteborg: Institutionen for pedagogik, Göteborgs Universitet Blum, A. (1990): The Economy of Childhood as a Phenomenon of the Life World of Modern Society. In Adler, P. A., Adler, P., Mandell, N. and Cahill, S. (Eds.): Sociological Studies of Child Development, A Research Annual, Vol. 3. Greenwich, Connecticut: JAI Press, 29-62

References

291

Boehnke, K. and Merkens, H. (1994): Methodologische Probleme des Ost-West-Vergleichs am Beispiel der Wertforschung zu Kollektivismus und Individualismus. Zeitschrift flir Sozialisationsforschung und Erziehungssoziologie, 3, 212-226 Boudon, R. (1990): O lugar de desordem. Lisbon: Gradiva Bourdieu, P. (1980): La jeunesse n'est qu'un mot. In Bourdieu, P.: Questions de sociologie. Paris: Editions de Minuit, 143-154 Bourdieu, P. (1979/1982/1984): La Distinction. Critique sociale du jugement. Paris: Les Editions de Minuit [In German as Die feinen Unterschiede. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp: 1982; in English as Distinction: a social critique of the judgement of taste. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press: 1984] Bourdieu, P. and Passeron, J.-C. (1977): Reproduction in Education, Society and Culture. London/Beverly Hills: Sage Bowles, S. and Gintis, H. (1987): Democracy and Capitalism. Property, Community, and the Contradictions of Modern Social Thought. New York: Basic Books Bradshaw, J. (1990): Child poverty and deprivation in the UK. Innocenti Occasional Papers Number 8, Firenze: Spedale degli Innocenti-UNICEF Bradshaw, J. et al. (1993): Support for children. A comparison of arrangements in fifteen countries., Department of Social Security Research Report No. 2, London: HMSO Brah, A. (1993): Re-framing Europe: engendered racisms, ethnicities, and nationalisms. Feminist Review, 45, 9-28 Bramanti, D. (1993): Política sociale e ciclo di vita. In Donati, P. (a cura di): Fondamenti di política sociale. Obiettivi e Strategie. Roma: La Nuova Italia Scientifica Brieland. D. and Korr, W. (1992): The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. Paper presented at the International Conference on Children at Risk, Bergen/Norway Bronfenbrenner, U. (1976): Ein Bezugsrahmen für ökologische Sozialisationsforschung. Neue Sammlung, 16, 238-249 Büchner, P. (1983): Vom Befehlen und Gehorchen zum Verhandeln. In: Preuss-Lausitz, U. et al: Kriegskinder, Konsumkinder, Krisenkinder. Weinheim: Beltz, 196-212 Büchner, P. (1985): Einfiihrung in die Soziologie der Erziehung und des Bildungswesens. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft Büchner, P. (1990): Growing Up in the Eighties: Changes in the Social Biography of Childhood in the FRG. In Chisholm, L„ Büchner, P., Krüger, H.-H. and Brown, P. (Eds): Childhood, Youth and Social Change. Lewes: Falmer Press, 71-84. [Also in German in Büchner, P., Krüger, H.-H. and Chisholm, L. (Eds.) (1990): Kindheit und Jugend im interkulturellen Vergleich. Opladen: Leske + Büdlich] Büchner, P. and Fuhs, B. (1993): Außerschulisches Kinderleben im deutsch-deutschen Vergleich. Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte, 24, 21-31 Büchner, P. and Krüger, H.-H. (Eds.) (1991): Aufwachsen hüben und drüben. Opladen: Leske + Büdlich Büchner, P., Krüger, H.-H. and du Bois-Reymond, M. (1994): Growing Up as a Modern Child in Europe. In: Mandell, N. (Ed.): Sociological Studies of Children. Vol. 6, Greenwich /Conn./London: JAI Press: 1-23 Bynner, J. and Roberts, K. (1991): Youth and Work. Transitions to Employment in England and Germany. London: Anglo-German Foundation Cabral, M. V., Freitas, E. and Rodrigues, M. L. (1993): Atitudes da popula?3o portuguesa perante o desenvolvimento. Principáis conclusöes da sondagem de 1991. In Gouveia, T.P. (Ed ): Sociedade, Valores Culturáis e Desenvolvimento, 25-81. Lisbon: Don Quixote Caldwell, J. C. (1982): Theory of Fertility Decline. London: Academic Press Campbell, C. (1987): The Romantic Ethic and the Spirit of Modern Consumerism. Oxford: Basil Blackwell

292

References

Cantwell, N. (1993): Monitoring the Convention through the Idea of the '3Ps'. In Heiliö, P.-L. et al.: Politics of Childhood and Children at Risk. Provision - Protection - Participation. Wien: European Centre, 121-127 Catanzaro, R. (1983): Struttura sociale, sistema politico e azione collettiva nel Mezzogiorno. Stato e Mercato, 8, 271-315 Catanzaro, R. (1989): Funzioni di mediazione e sistemi di regolazione sociale. In Catanzaro, R. (Ed.): Società, politica e cultura nel Mezzogiorno. Milano: F. Angeli, 13-28 Cavalli, A. (1990) (Ed.): I giovani del Mezzogiorno. Bologna: Il Mulino Cavalli, A. (1993): Il Mezzogiorno, la vera questione nazionale. Il Mulino, 6, 1080-1088 Cavalli, A. and Galland, O. (Eds.) (1993): L'allongement de la Jeunesse. Arles: Editions Actes-Sud CEC (Commission of the European Communities) (1984): Young Europeans in 1983. Luxembourg: Office for Official Publications of the European Communities CEC (1990): Young Europeans in 1987. Luxembourg: Office for Official Publications of the European Communities CEC (1991a): Young Europeans 1990. Luxembourg: Office for Official Publications of the European Communities CEC (1991b): Annual Economic Report 1992-1993. No.50, Luxembourg: Office for Official Publications of the European Communities CEC (1993a): European Social Policy. Options for the Union. Directorate General for Employment, Industrial Relations and Social Affairs. Luxembourg: Office for Official Publications of the European Communities CEC (1993b): Growth, Competitiveness and Employment. White Paper. Luxembourg: Office for Official Publications of the European Communities CEC (1994): Social Protection in Europe 1993. Luxembourg: Office for Official Publications of the European Communities Chamboredon, J.-C. (1967): La société française et sa jeunesse. In Darras, P.: Le Partage des Bénéfices. Paris: Editions de Minuit, 155-175 Chelu, V. (1993): Toxicomania. Report de Cercetare Privind Copii Strazii 1992. [Toxicomania. Research Report on Street Children 1992 ] Caiete Stiintifice 4, Bucuresti: Institutul de Cercetari Pentru Problemele Tineretului Chisholm, L. (1990): Beyond Occupational Choices: A Study of Gendered Transitions. University of London: Institute of Education, Ph.D. (Ms.) Chisholm, L. (1992a): A crazy quilt: education, training and social change in Europe. In Bailey, J. (Ed.): Social Europe, London: Longman, 123-146 Chisholm, L. (1992b): Paradise Lost - Lost in Paradise. Ist die deutsche Kindheitsforschung zur Entromantisierung fähig? Sozialwissenschaftliche Literatur Rundschau, 15, 98-111 Chisholm, L. (1993a): Young people in Eastern Europe: their lives and futures. In ECB (European Coordination Bureau of International Youth Organisations) (Ed.): We Ask: Do We Have a Future? Bruxelles/Strasbourg: ECB/EYF, 14-20 Chisholm, L. (1993b): Young people in the European Community. Staking the terrain for European youth research. Youth and Policy, 40 (Spring), 49-61 Chisholm L. (1993c): Adolescent girls and schooling. Gender, youth and transitions. Comenius, 52, 450-469 Chisholm, L. (1994a): Lessons from Europe? On the political curriculum of shadow-boxing. In Lawrence, I. (Ed.): Education Tomorrow? London: Cassell, 145-160 Chisholm, L. (1994b): Young Europeans and Vocational Counselling: What do which young people need and want? Synthesis Report. Cedefop panorama 5042, Berlin: Cedefop (available in D, E, F, It and Es) Chisholm, L. (1994c): Cultural semantics: occupations and gender discourse. In Atkinson, P., Delamont, S. and Davies, B. (Eds.): Discourse and Reproduction. New Jersey: Hampton Press, Cresskill, Ch.2

References

293

Chisholm, L. (1995): Youth transitions in the European Union. In Coulby, D., Jones, C., Bash, L. and Green, A, (Eds.): Youth, Education and Work. World Yearbook of Education 1995, London: Kogan Page Chisholm, L. and Bergeret, J.-M. (1991): Young People in the European Community. Towards an Agenda for Research and Policy. Report to the Commission of the European Communities Task Force Human Resources, Education, Training and Youth. Brussels: PETRA/Youth Bureau (available in D, E and F) Chisholm, L., Büchner, P., Krüger, H.-H. and Brown, P. (Eds.) (1990): Childhood, Youth and Social Change. A Comparative Perspective. Lewes: Falmer Press (Also in German: Büchner, P., Krüger, H.H. and Chisholm, L. (Eds.) (1990): Kindheit und Jugend im interkulturellen Vergleich. Opladen: Leske + Büdlich.) Chisholm, L., du Bois-Reymond, M. and Coffield, F. (1995): What does Europe mean to me? Dimensions of distance and disillusion amongst young Europeans. In CYRCE (Ed.): European Yearbook for Youth Policy and Research. Berlin/New York: de Gruyter Chisholm, L. and Hurrelmann, K. (1995): Structured Contradictions in Adolescence. Journal of Adolescence (in press) Chisholm, L. and Liebau, E. (Eds.) (1993): Youth, Social Change and Education: Issues, Problems, Policies in post-1992 Europe. Journal of Education Policy, 8, 1 (Special Issue) (Also in Portuguese: Translated and edited by Vaz Pinto, I. and Pais, J. M. (1994): Jovens Europeus: Mudarla Social, Educafäo e Modos de Vida. Estudos de Juventude 8. Lisboa: Instituto Portugues da Juventude) Chodorow, N. and Contrato, S. (1982): The Fantasy of the Perfect Mother. In Thorne, B. and Yalom, M. (Eds): Rethinking the Family. New York: Longham ChnstofTersen. M. N. (1993): Familiens aendringer - en statistisk belysning af familieforholdene. Socialforskningsinstitutet Rapport 93:2, Kobnhavn Christoffersen, M. N., Bertelsen, O. and Vestergaard, P. (1987): Hvem passer vore born? Kobnhavn: Socialforskningsinstitutet Colasanti, G., Trasei, A. R, Ronnita, T. and Marmmare, V. (1990): I Cosentini. Inchiesta sulla nuova società meridionale. Milano: F. Angeli Coleman, J.S. (1990): Foundations of Social Theory. Cambridge, Mass /London: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press Coles, R. (1967): Children of Crisis. A Study of Courage and Fear. Vol. I, London: Faber & Faber Commissione d'indagine sulla povertà e l'emarginazione (1992): Secondo rapporto sulla povertà in Italia. Milano: F. Angeli Consiglio Nazionale dei Minori (1989): I Minori in Italia. Prima relazione del Cnm. Rapporto sulla condizione dei minori in Italia. Milano: F. Angeli Consiglio Nazionale dei Minori (1990): Secondo rapporto sulla condizione dei minori in Italia. Milano: F. Angeli C o n i a , A. G. (1990): Child poverty and deprivation in industrialized countries: Recent trends and policy options. Innocenti Occasional Papers Number 2, Firenze: Spedale degli Innocenti-UNICEF Crook, S., Pakulski, J. and Waters, M. (1992): Postmodernization: Change in Advanced Society. London: Sage Cross, M. and Payne, J. (Eds.) (1991): Work and Enterprise Culture Explorations. Sociology, 38, London/New York: Falmer Press CSCPT (Centre of Studies and Research on Youth Problems) (1994): Starea Tineretului Roman. [The Condition of Rumanian Youth.] Bucuresti: Ministry of Youth and Sport Cunningham, H. (1991): The Children of the Poor. Representations of Childhood since the Seventeenth Century. Oxford: Blackwell Cutright, P. and Smith, H. L. (1986): Declining family size and the number of children in poor families in the United States 1964-1983. Social Science Research, 15, 3, 256-268

294

References

CYRCE (Ed.) (1995): European Yearbook for Youth Policy and Research. Berlin/New York: de Gruyter Czerwenka, K., Nölle, K„ Pause, G., Schlotthaus, W., Schmidt, H.J. and Tessloff, J. (1990): Schülerurteile über die Schule. Frankfurt/M.: Peter Lang Dahlberg, G. (1992): Child-parent relationship and socialization in the context of modern childhood. Stockholm: Institute of Education/Department of Early Childhood Education Dahlberg, G. (1993): Modern barnuppfostran och modernt familjeliv - en komplex och sofistikerad förhandlingsprocess. Om modernt familjeliv och familjeseparationer. Stockholm: Socialvetenskapliga forskningsrädet/Socialdepartementet Danziger, S. and Stern, J. (1990): The causes and consequences of child poverty in the United States. Innocenti Occasional Papers Number 10, Firenze: Spedale degli Innocenti-UNICEF Davis, J. (1977): People of the Mediterranean. An Essay in Comparative Social Anthropology. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul de Swaan, A. (1982): Vom Ausgehverbot zur Angst vor der Straße. Päd. extra, 10, 48-55 Delhausse, B., Luttgens A. and Perelman, S. (1993): Comparing measures of poverty and relative deprivation. An example for Belgium. Journal of Population Economics, 6, 1, 83-102 Deliyanni-Kouimtzis, V. (1987): Sex role stereotypes in the new primary school reading books. Philologos, 44, 224-248 Deliyanni-Kouimtzis, V. (1992a): 'Father is out shopping, because Mother is at work...'. Greek Primary School Reading Texts as an Example of Educational Policy for Gender Equality. Gender and Education, 4, 1/2, 67-79 Deliyanni-Kouimtzis, V. (1992b): 'A part-time job and a nice family'. Dreams and Expectations of Adolescent Girls. Paper presented at the Conference Alice in Wonderland, 1st International Conference on Girls and Girlhood, Amsterdam 16-19 June deMause, L. (Ed.) (1974): The History of Childhood. New York: The Psychohistory Press Dencik, L. (1989): Growing Up in the Post-Modern Age: On the Child's Situation in the Modern Family, and on the Position of the Family in the Modern Welfare State. Acta Sociologica, 32, 2, 155-180 Dencik, L. (1993a): Post-Modernisation and Ethnification: Reflexions on Xenophobia and Exile in Contemporary Modernity. In Rescue-43 Xenophobia and Exile. Copenhagen: Munksgaard, 97-113 Dencik, L, (1993b): Mutter Sveas Kinder oder die Fahrt des Kindes Richtung Wohlfahrt. In Neubauer, G. und Sünker, H. (Eds ): Kindheitspolitik, Opladen: Leske + Büdlich, 25-43 Dencik, L. (1993c): Modernisation and Socialisation: The case of Sweden. On new patterns of family life and its implications on child-rearing in an advanced welfare society. Tokyo/Shiga: The International Forum on Youth '93 Dencik, L., Bäckström, C. and Larsson, E. (1988): Barnets tvä världar. Stockholm: Esselte Studium Deutscher Bundesjugendring (1992): Kinder in Jugendverbänden, Selbstverständnis und Bedeutung kinderpolitischer Interessenvertretung. Bonn Deutscher Kinderschutzbund (DKSB) (1992): Gespräch mit Vertretern der Verbände zur Umsetzung der UN-Kinderkonvention. Bonn, 8 October Deutsches Kinderhilfswerk (DKHW) (1991): UN-Konvention über die Rechte des Kindes. München: DKHW Di Palma, G. (1970): Apathy and Participation. Mass Politics in Western Societies. New York: The Free Press Dietze, L. (1989): Elternrecht - Kindesrecht. In Melzer, W. and Sünker, H.: Wohl und Wehe der Kinder. Pädagogische Vermittlungen von Kindheitstheorie, Kinderleben und gesellschaftlichen Kindheitsbildern. Weinheim: Juventa, 102-120 Dinnerstein, D. (1977): The Mermaid and the Minotaur: Sexual Arrangements and Human Malaise. New York: Harper & Row DJI (Deutsches Jugendinstitut) (Ed.) (1992): Was tun Kinder am Nachmittag? Ergebnisse einer empirischen Studie zur mittleren Kindheit. München: Verlag Deutsches Jugendinstitut

References

295

DJ1 (Ed.) (1993): Jugend - Wirtschall - Politik. Lernen und arbeiten in Europa. Weinheim/München: Juventa/DJI Donzelot, Jacques (1979): The Policing of Families. London: Hutchinson du Bois-Reymond, M. (1991): Zum Wandel der Beziehungen zwischen Eltern und Heranwachsenden. Ein Generationenvergleich aus niederländischer Sicht. In Büchner, P. and Krüger, H.-H. (Eds.): Aufwachsen hüben und drüben. Opladen: Leske + Büdlich, 297-306 du Bois-Reymond, M. (1994): Die moderne Familie als Verhandlungshaushalt. In du Bois-Reymond, M., Büchner, P., Kriiger, H.-H., Ecarius, J. and Fuhs, B. (1994): Kinderleben. Modernisierung von Kindheit im interkulturellen Vergleich. Opladen: Leske + Budrich, 137-219 du Bois-Reymond, M., Büchner, P. and Kriiger, H-H. (1993): Modern family as everyday negotiation: continuities and discontinuities in parent-child relationships. Childhood, 1, 87-99 du Bois-Reymond, M., Büchner, P., Kriiger, H.-H., Ecarius, J. and Fuhs, B. (1994): Kinderleben. Modernisierung von Kindheit im interkulturellen Vergleich. Opladen: Leske + Budrich du Bois-Reymond, M., Diekstra, R., Hurrelmann, K. and Peters, E. (Eds.) (1995): Coping Strategies and Status Transitions in Adolescence. Modern Youth in Germany and The Netherlands. Berlin/New York: de Gruyter du Bois-Reymond, M. and Hübner-Funk, S. (1992): Jugend und Jugendforschung in Europa. In H.-H. Kriiger (Ed.): Handbuch der Jugendforschung. Opladen: Leske + Budrich, 2nd. revised edition, 63-88 du Bois-Reymond, M., van Rooijen, E. and Guit, H. (1991): Life Perspectives of Adolescents. In: Heinz, W. R. (Ed.): The Life Course and Social Change: Comparative Perspectives. Weinheim: Deutscher Studien Verlag Dubar, C. (1991): La socialisation. Paris: Armand Collin Duncan, G.J. (1991): The economic environment of childhood. In Huston, A. C. (Ed.): Children in poverty. Child development and public policy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Duncan, G. J. et al. (1993): Poverty dynamics in eight countries. Journal of Population Economics, 6, 3, 215-234 Dürkheim, E. (1922): Education et Sociologie. Paris: Alcan Dürkheim, E. (1961): The Elementary Forms of Religious Life. New York: The Free Press Eckert, R., Drieseberg, T. and Willems, H. (1990): Sinnwelt Freizeit. Opladen: Leske + Budrich Eichholz, R. (1991): Die UN-Kinderkonvention aus Ländersicht. In DKHW (1991): UN-Konvention über die Rechte des Kindes. München: DKHW Eicke, D.-R. (1980): 'Teenager' zu Kaisers Zeiten. Die 'höhere' Tochter in Gesellschaft, Anstands- und Mädchenbüchern zwischen 1860 und 1900. Marburg: Universität Marburg Eisenstadt, S. N. and Lemarchand, R. (Eds.) (1981): Political Clientelism, Patronage and Development. Beverly Hills/London: Sage Eisenstadt, S. N. and Roniger, L. (1984): Patrons, Clients and Friends. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Elder, J. and Glen H. (1974): Children of the Great Depression. Chicago/London: The University of Chicago Press Elder, G. H., Modell, J. and Parke, R. D. (Eds.) (1993): Children in Time and Place. Developmental and historical insights. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Elgaard, B. et al. (Eds) (1989): Research on Socialization of Young Children in the Nordic Countries. Aarhus: Aarhus University Press Elias, N. (1939/1978/1982): The Civilising Process. 2 Vols., Oxford: Basil Blackwell Elias, N. (1977): Zur Grundlegung einer Theorie sozialer Prozesse. Zeitschrift fur Soziologie, 6, 127-149 Elkind, D. (1979): The child and society. New York: Oxford University Press Elkind, D. (1981): The Hurried Child. Growing Up Too Fast Too Soon. Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley Elkind, D. (1984): All Grown-Up and No Place to Go. Teenagers in Crises. Reading, Mass.: AddisonWesley

296

References

Engel, U. and Hurrelmann, K. (1989): Psychosoziale Belastung im Jugendalter - Empirische Befunde zum Einfluß von Familie, Schule und Gleichaltrigengruppe. Berlin/New York: de Gruyter England, P. (1984): Wage appreciation and depreciation: a test of neoclassical economic explanations of occupational sex segregation. Social Forces, 62, 726-749 England, P. and McCreary, L. (1987): Gender Inequality in Paid Employment. In Hess, B. and Ferree, M. (Eds.): Analyzing Gender. Newbury Park, Calif.: Sage. Ennew, J. (1994): Childhood as a Social Phenomenon. National Report England and Wales. Eurosocial Report 36/16, Wien: European Centre Ennew, J. and Milne, B. (1989): The Next Generation: Lives of Third World Children. London: Zed Books Erikson, E. (1968): Identity, Youth and Crisis. New York: W.W. Norton Essed, P. (1991): Understanding Everyday Racism. London: Sage Ester, P., Halman, L. and de Moor, R. (1993): The Individualizing Society. Value Change in Europe and North America. Tilburg: Tilburg University Press European Values Group (Eds.) (1992): The European Values Study 1981-1990. London. The Gordon Cook Foundation Eurosocial (1989): Children at Risk. Report 33, Wien: European Centre Eurostat (1993): Labour Force Survey 1983-1991, Theme 3, Series C. Luxembourg: Office for Official Publications of the European Communities Ewen, S. (1988): All Consuming Images. New York: Basic Books Fantozzi, P. (1990): Appartenenza clientelare e appartenenza mafiosa. Le categorie delle scienze sociali e la logica della modernità meridionale. Meridiana, 7-8, 308-318 Fantozzi, P. (1993): Politica, clientela e regolazione sociale. Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino Fantozzi, P., Giacco, S. and Gaudio, F. (1981): La popolazione calabrese fra instabilità e dipendenza. Classe, 20, 135-155 Featherstone, M. (Ed.) (1990): Global Culture. Nationalism, Globalization and Modernity. London/Newbury Park/New Delhi: Sage Ferchhoff, W. (1993): Jugend an der Wende des 20. Jahrhunderts. Lebensformen und Lebensstile. Opladen: Leske + Büdlich Ferge, Z. (1974): Einige Zusammenhänge zwischen Sozialstruktur und Schulsystem. In Balla, B. (Ed.): Soziologie und Gesellschaft in Ungarn. Stuttgart: Ferdinand Enke, 116-144 Field, T. (1991): Quality infant day-care and grade school behaviour and performance. Child Development, 62, 863-870 Fomäs, J. and Boethius, U. (Eds.) (1990): Ungdom och kulturell modernisering. Stockholm: FUS Franklin, B. (Ed.) (1986): The Rights of Children. Oxford: Blackwell Frost, N. and Stein, M. (1989): The Politics of Child Welfare. Inequality, Power and Change. New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf Fuchs, W. (1983): Jugendliche Statuspassage oder individualisierte Jugendbiographie? Soziale Welt, 34, 341-371 Fünfter Jugendbericht (1980): Bericht über die Bestrebungen und Leistungen der Jugendhilfe. Bonn: Deutscher Bundestag Fürstenau, P. (1973): Soziologie der Kindheit. Heidelberg: Quelle und Meyer Furstenberg,. F. (1985): Sociological Ventures. Child Development, 56, 2, 281-288 Furstenberg, F. (1993): Reflexions on the Sociology of Childhood. In Qvortrup, J. (Ed.): Childhood as a Social Phenomenon: Lessons from an International Project. Wien: European Centre, 29-43 Galland, O. (1990): Un nouvel âge de la vie. Revue Française de Sociologie, 4, 529-550 Galland, O. (1993): «Vie solitaire» et «solitude»: le cas des jeunes. L'Année Sociologique, 43, n° spécial sur la sociologie des moeurs, 213-233

References

297

Galland, O. and Garrigues, P. (1989): La vie quotidienne des jeunes du lycée au marriage. Economie et Statistiques, 223, 15-23 Galtung, J. (1975). Strukturelle Gewalt. Reinbek: Rowohlt Gergen, K. J. (1991): The Saturated Self. Dilemmas of Identity in Contemporary Life. New York: Basic Books Gerhards, J. (1988): Soziologie der Emotionen. Weinheim/München: Juventa Gerschenkron, A. (1952): Economic Backwardness in Historical Perspective. In Hoselitz, B. F. (Ed.): The Progress of Underdeveloped Areas. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 3-29 Giddens, A. (1991): Modernity and Self-Identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age. Cambridge: Polity Press. Giddens, A. (1994): Gender and postmodernity. Unpublished lecture to the University of Helsinki, Department of Sociology, 15 April Gilroy, P. (1992): The End Of Antiracism. In Donald, J. and Rattansi, A. (Eds): 'Race', Culture and Difference. London: Sage Ginatempo, N. (1993): Donne al confine. Milano: F. Angeli Glaser, B. G. and Strauss, A. L. (1967): The Discovery of Grounded Theory. Chicago: University of Chicago Press Glendinning, C. and Millar, J. (1987): Women and Poverty in Britain. Brighton: Harvester Wheatsheaf Göhlich, M. (1993): Die pädagogische Umgebung. Eine Geschichte des Schulraums seit dem Mittelalter. Weinheim: Deutscher Studien Verlag Graudenz, I. and Randoll, D. (1992): Schule im Urteil von Abiturienten. Frankfurt/M.: Deutsches Institut fur Internationale Pädgogische Forschung Graziani, A. (1987): Mezzogiorno oggi. Meridiana, 1, 201-218 Graziano, L. (1976): A Conceptual Framework for the Study of Clientelistic Behaviour. European Journal of Political Research, 4, 149-174 Graziano, L. (1977): Patron-Client Relationships in Southern Italy. In Schmidt, S.W., Scott, J.C., Lande, C. and Guasti, L. (Eds.) (1976): Friends, Followers and Factions. Berkeley: University of California Press, 360-378 te Grotenhuis, H. (1993): Does a welfare state eliminate the intergenerational effects of unemployment? Amsterdam: PdlS University of Amsterdam Gustafsson, B. and Kjulin. U. (1992): Barnomsorg och Hushâllsarbetet. Göteborg: Nationalekonomiska Institutionen, Göteborgs Universitet Hagestadt, G. (1991): Trends and Dilemmas in Life Course Research. In Heinz, W.R. (Ed.): Theoretical Advances in Life Course Research. Weinheim: Deutscher Studien Verlag, 23-57 Hall, S. (1991a): The local and the global: globalization and ethnicity. In King, A. D. (Ed.): Culture, Globalization and the World-System. London/Basingstoke: Macmillan, 19-40 Hall, S. (1991b): Old and new identities, old and new ethnicities. In King, A. D. (Ed.): Culture, Globalization and the World-System. London/Basingstoke: Macmillan, 41-68 Hall, S. (1992): New Ethnicities. In Donald, J. and Rattansi, A. (Eds): 'Race', Culture and Difference. London: Sage Hall, S. and Jefferson, T. (1976): Resistance through Rituals. London: Hutchinson Hannerz, U. (1990): Cosmopolitans and locals in world culture. In Featherstone, M. (Ed.): Global Culture. Nationalism, Globalization and Modernity. London/Newbury Park/New Delhi: Sage Hannerz, U. (1991): Scenarios for peripheral cultures. In King, A. D. (Ed.): Culture, Globalization and the World-System. London/Basingstoke: Macmillan, 107-128 Hardman, C. (1973): Can there be an anthropology of children. Journal of the Anthropological Society of Oxford, IV, 2, 85-99 Hazekamp, J. L., Meeus, W. and te Poel, Y. (Eds.) (1987): European Contributions to Youth Research. Amsterdam: Free University Press

298

References

Hebdige, D. (1979): Subcultures. The Meaning of Style. London and New York: Methuen Heiliö, P.-L., Lauronen, E. and Bardy, M. (Eds.) (1993): Politics of Childhood and Children at Risk. Provision - Protection - Participation. Wien: European Centre Heinz, W. R. (Ed.) (1991): Theoretical Advances in Life Course Research. Weinheim: Deutscher Studien Verlag Heitmeyer, W. and Olk, T. (1990): Das Individualisierungs-Theorem - Bedeutung für die Vergesellschaftung von Jugendlichen. In Heitmeyer, W. and Olk, T. (Eds ): Individualisierung von Jugend. Weinheim/München: Juventa Heliou, M. (1985): The results of women's decade in education. O Agonas tis Gynaikas, 25, 38 Hendrick, H. (1990): Images of Youth. Oxford: Clarendon Hengst, H. (Ed.) (1985): Kindheit in Europa. Zwischen Spielplatz und Computer. Frankfurt/M.: suhrkamp Henschel, T. R. and Thimmel, A. (Eds.) (1993): 'Wohin der Stier uns trägt'. Anforderungen an eine europabezogene Jugend- und Bildungspolitik. Bonn: Europa Union Verlag Herrmann, U. (1982): Die Bildung des Bürgers. Die Formierung der bürgerlichen Gesellschaft und die Gebildeten im 18. Jahrhundert. Geschichte des Erziehungs- und Bildungswesens in Deutschland, Band 2, Weinheim/Basel: Beltz Herrmann, U. (1991): Historische Bildungsforschung und Sozialgeschichte der Bildung. Programme Analysen - Ergebnisse. Weinheim: Deutscher Studien Verlag Hettlage, R. (Ed.) (1994): Bildung in Europa: Bildung für Europa? Schriftenreihe der Europa-Kolloquien Band 3, Regensburg: Universitätsverlag (See Part IV) Hill, M. S. and Morgan, J. N. (1985): Book Review. Journal of the American Statistical Association, 80, (December), 1061-1062 Hioni, G. (1989): Women's Work. Paper presented at the Conference Women in the Labour Market, Athens, 3-5 May Hoem, J. (1990): Social Policy and Recent Fertility Change in Sweden. Population and Development Review, 16, 4 Hoem, J., Stafford, F. and Sundström, M. (1990): Parental Leave Policy and Women's Careers in Sweden. Paper presented at the Eale Conference Lund, Sweden, 20-23 September, Stockholm: Demography Unit, Stockholm University Holland, J. (1988): Girls and occupational choice: in search of meanings. In Pollard, A., Purvis, J. and Walford, G. (Eds ): Education, Training and the New Vocationalism. Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 129-147 Holman, R. (1978): Poverty. Explanation of social deprivation. London: Martin Robertson & Company Ltd. Home Office (1994): Control of Immigration Statistics. Report No. CM2637, London: HMSO Horn, K. (1967): Dressur oder Erziehung. Schlagrituale und ihre gesellschaftliche Funktion. Frankfurt/M: Suhrkamp Hübner-Funk, S. (1991): The vision of a European identity of youth: western and eastern loyalties in the process of convergence. Paper presented at the ISA RC34 Conference Youth in a Changing Europe, Uppsala, August Huet, M. (1992): Le Statut des jeunes entre la vie scolaire et la vie professionnelle dans certains pays membres du Conseil de l'Europe. Brussels: Les Editions du Conseil de l'Europe Hurrelmann, K. (1989): The social world of adolescence. In Hurrelmann, K. and Engel, U. (Eds ): The Social World of Adolescence. Berlin/New York: de Gniyter Huston, A. C. (1992a): Children in poverty: development and policy issues. In Huston, A. C. (Ed.): Children in Poverty. Child Development and Public Policy. Cambridge, Mass.: Cambridge University Press

References

299

Huston, A. C. (Ed.) (1992b): Children in Poverty. Child Development and Public Policy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Inglehart, R. (1977): The Silent Revolution: Changing Values and Political Styles Among Western Publics. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Inglehart, R. (1990): Culture Shifts in Advanced Industrial Society. Princeton: Princeton University Press Institute of Social Sciences (1993): Survey of Young People in Loures. Report to the Loures Municipal Council, Lisboa: Universidade Lisboa Institute of Social Sciences (1994): Survey of Cultural Practices of the People of Lisbon. Report to Lisbon '94 - Capital of Culture, Lisboa: Universidade Lisboa Institute of Sociology (1992): Civil Society. Bratislava: Slovak Academy of Sciences Institute of Sociology (1993): The Attitudes of Slovak Citizens. Bratislava: Slovak Academy of Sciences Istberg, V. (1994): Barns levnadsvillkor. In Fritzell, J. and Lundberg, O. (Eds): Vardagens villkor, Levnadsförhällanden i Sverige under tre decennier. Stockholm: Brombergs, 28-58 Iversen, L. and Meyrowitsch, R. (1985): Arbejdslöshed foräldre, böm, daginstitution. Köbnhavn: Institutet for Social Medicin, Kobnhavns Universitet (mimeo) Jacoby, A. and Näsman, E. (1989): Mamma, Pappa, Jobb. Stockholm: Arbetslivscentrum/Brevskolan Jallinoja, R. (1991): Moderni elämä. Ajankuva ja käytäntö. Rauma: SKS Jalmert, L. (1990): An Introduction to the Issue of Increasing Men's Involvement as Fathers in the Care of Children. Keynote paper at the seminar Men as Carers for Children, European Commission Childcare Network, Ross Priory, 16-19 May James, S. (1990): Is there a 'place' for children in geography? Area, 22, 3, 278-283 Jedlowski, P. (1992): Su qualche contraddizione del clientelismo. In Cerase, F. P. (Ed.): Dopo il familismo, cosa? Milano: F. Angeli, 74-83 Jensen, A.-M. and Saporiti, A. (1992): Do children count? Childhood as a social phenomenon. A statistical compendium. Eurosocial Report 36/17, Wien: European Centre Joosens, L. and Bontinckx, C. (1993): Les Jeunes Consommateurs Europeens. Brussels: Centre de Recherche et d'Information des Organisations de Consommateurs (CRIOC) Jugendwerk der Deutschen Shell (Ed.) (1992): Jugend '92. Opladen: Leske + Büdlich Kanitz, O. F. (1925): Das proletarische Kind in der bürgerlichen Gesellschaft. Jena: Diederichs Kant, I. (1899): On Education. London Karsten, M.-E. and Sünker, H. (1990): Kommunale Sozialpolitik: Herausforderung durch Kinder. In Otto, H.-U. and Karsten, M.-E. (Eds ): Sozialberichterstattung. Weinheim: Juventa, 103-121 Kaufmann, F.-X. (1990): Zukunft der Familie. München: Beck Keskinen, V. (1994): Mozartista Leskiseen. Helsinkiläisten musiikkimaut. Helsinki: Heisingin kaupungin tietokeskus Key, E. (1978): Das Jahrhundert des Kindes. [The Century of the Child ] Königstein: Athenäum Klages, H. (1984): Wertorientierungen im Wandel. Frankfurt am Main: Campus Kohli, M. (1986): Der Lebenslauf im Strukturwandel der Moderne. Soziale Welt, Sonderband 4, 183-208 Koklyagina, L. (1992): Urban youth: a sociological view. In Riordan, J. (Ed.): Soviet Social Reality in the Mirror of Glasnost. London: Macmillan St. Martin's Press, 41-50 Koklyagina, L. (1993): Generation With a Real Choice? Young Employees in a Changing Russia. Social Action: Journal of the Centre for Social Action 1, 3, 3-7 Kontogiannopoulou-Polydorides, G. (1991): Greece. In Wilson, M. (Ed ): Girls and Young Women in Education. London: Pergamon Press Kontula, O. and Haavio-Mannila, E. (Eds.) (1993): Suomalainen seksi. Juva: WSOY Kovacheva, S. and Wallace, C. (1994): Why do youth revolt? Some reflections from young people and politics in eastern and western Europe. Youth and Policy, 44, (Spring), 7-20 Knimrey, H.-V. (1984): Entwicklungsstrukturen von Verhaltensstandarden. Frankfurt: Campus

300

References

Kühnel, W. (1992): Deutsch-deutsche Kindheit und lugend vor und nach der Vereinigung - Tradition und Perspektiven der Kindheits- und Jugendforschung. Sozialwissenschaftliche Literatur Rundschau, 15, 81-97 La Palombara, J. (1964): Interest Groups in Italian Politics. Princeton: Princeton University Press Lagrée, J.-C. (1991): Génération. Annales de Vaucresson, 30/31, 59-79 Lahikainen, A. R. and Stränden, H. (1991): To separate and to integrate: the challenges of dual socialisation in modern society. Paper presented at the International Society for the Study of Behavioural Development, Minneapolis/USA (mimeo) Lähteenmaa, J. (1991): Hip-hoppareita, lähiöläisiä ja kultturelleja. Nuorisoiyhmistä 80-luvun lopun Helsingissä. Helsinki: Heisingin kaupungin nuorisoasiainkeskus Lähteenmaa, J. and Siurala, L. (Eds.) (1991): Nuoret ja muutos. Helsinki: Tilastokeskus and Nuorisotutkimusseura Lamnek, S. (1989): Qualitative Sozialforschung. 2 Vols., München: PVU Lampiri-Dimaki, I. (1974): Towards a Greek Sociology of Education. Athens: National Center for Social Research Landesregierung Vorarlberg (1990): Vorarlberger Jugendstudie. Bregenz, A-IV Jugend und Familie Landgren-Möller, E. (1993): Statistics on Swedish Children with Unemployed Parents. Stockholm: Statistics Sweden Lapidus, G. W. (1979): Woman in Soviet Society. Berkeley: University of California Press Lash, C. (1979): The Culture of Narcissism. New York: W. W. Norton Lash, C. (1991): The True and Only Heaven. Progress and Its Critics. New York: W. W. Norton Leccardi, C. (1990): Giovani in Calabria fra tradizione e modernità. Cosenza: Marra Leccardi, C. (1992): Giovani donne, immagini del lavoro e mutamento sociale in Calabria. Politiche del lavoro, 20, 177-200 Lenz, K. (1986): Alltagswelten von Jugendlichen. Frankfurt/New York: Campus Lewin, K. (1936): Principles of Topological Psychology. New York: McGraw-Hill Lewin, K. (1964): Field Theory in Social Science. New York: Harper Liebau, E. and Chisholm, L. (1993): Youth, social change and education: issues and problems. In Chisholm, L. and Liebau, E. (Eds.): Youth, Social Change and Education: Issues, Problems, Policies in post-1992 Europe. Journal of Education Policy, 8, 1 (Special Issue) Lomasky, L. E. (1987): Persons, Rights, and the Moral Community. New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press London Programme (1993): Deportation. Episode transmitted 8 October, London Weekend Television Lopatka, A. (1993): Work and Experiences in the Initiation Process for the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. In Heiliö, P.-L., Lauronen, E. and Bardy, M. (Eds.): Politics of Childhood and Children at Risk. Provision - Protection - Participation. Wien: European Centre, 131-139 Lüscher, K. and Lange, A. (1992): Konzeptuelle Grundlagen einer Politik fur Kinder: Ansätze und Begründungen aus sozialwissenschaftlicher Sicht. Zeitschrift tur Sozialisationsforschung und Bildungssoziologie, 12 Macdonald, I., Bhavnani, R., Khan, L. and John, G. (1989): Murder in the Playground. London: Longsight Press Madsen, M„ Lindahl, A„ Osler, M. and Bjerregard, P. (1991): Börns sundhed ved skolestart 1988/89. Kabnhavn: DIKE Mannheim, K. (1928): Das Problem der Generationen. Kölner Vierteljahreshefte für Soziologie 2, 157ff. and 309ff. Maragoudaki, E. (1993): Education and Gender Discrimination. Athens: Odysseas Markefka, M. and Nauck, B. (Eds.) (1993): Handbuch der Kindheitsforschung. Neuwied: Luchterhand Maruani, M. (1994): Temps, Emploi, Revenus: anciens clivages, nouveaux partages. Colloque Families et recherches, Paris: IDEF

References

301

Mateus, A. (1992): A economía portuguesa depois da adesäo às Comunidades Europeias: Transformaçôes e desafíos. Análise Social, 27, 4/5, 655 - 671 Matthews, M. (1982): Education in the Soviet Union: Policies and Institutions since Stalin. London: George Allen and Unwin Matthews, N. H. (1992): Making Sense of Place: Children's Understanding of Large Scale Environments. Harvester Wheatsheaf/Barnes & Noble Books McClelland, D C. (1961): The Achieving Society. Princeton: Van Nostrand Medeiros, F. (1992): A formado do espaco social portugués: entre a "sociedade providencia" e urna CEE providencial. Análise Social, 27, 4/5, 671ff Melzer, W., Heitmeyer, W., Liegle, L. and Zinnecker, J. (Eds.) (1991): Osteuropäische Jugend im Wandel. Ergebnisse vergleichender Jugendforschung in der Sowjetunion, Polen, Ungarn und der ehemaligen DDR. Weinheim/München: Juventa Melzer, W., Lukowski, W. and Schmidt, L. (1991): Deutsch-polnischer Jugendreport. Lebenswelten im Kulturvergleich. Weinheim/München: Juventa Melzer, W. and Sünker, H. (1989): Wohl und Wehe der Kinder. Pädagogische Vermittlungen von Kindheitstheorie, Kinderleben und gesellschaftlichen Kindheitsbildern. Weinheim/Miinchen: Juventa Merkens, H. and Kirchhofer, D. (1993): Freizeit Ost- und Westberliner Schüler. Zeitschrift für Pädagogik, 6, 931-951 Meulders, D. and Tytgar, B. (1989): Les emplois atypiques dans les Etats de la Communauté Economique Européenne. Travail et Emploi, 39, 87-98 Meyer, P. (1983): The Child and the State. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Mills, C. W. (1961): The Sociological Imagination. New York: Grove Press Mincer, J. and Polachek, S. (1974): Family Investments in Human Capital: Earnings of Women. Journal of Political Economy, 82, 76-108. Mingione, E. (1993): Disoccupazione, sottoccupazione, lavoro nero e informale nel sistema socioeconomico del Mezzogiorno. In Boccella, N. (Ed.): Stato, Mercato, Mezzogiorno. Napoli: Liguori, 113-139 Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports (1991): Slovakia - Prieskum aktuálnych problémov vybranych skupín mládeze v SR. Bratislava: Youth Department Minulescu, M. (1992): Rumanian Youth: Values and Attitudes, Self-image and Cultural Identity. Paper presented at the International Conference of the Free Psychiatric Association, University of Bucuresti, October (mimeo) Minulescu, M. (1994): Racisme et Identité - Entre le Vécu et les Données de Recherches Scientifiques. Paper presented at the OFAJ Research Programme Conference 'Sensibilisation aux Pratiques Interculturelles en Europe', Freie Universität Berlin, March (mimeo) Mitter, W., Weiß, M. and Schäfer, U. (Eds.) (1992): Neuere Entwicklungstendenzen im Bildungswesen in Osteuropa. Frankfurt/M.: Peter Lang Morin, E. (1966): Adolescents en transition. Classe adolescente et classe sociales, asspirations au divertissement et aspiration à la vie bourgeoise dans une commune du Sud-Finistère. Revue Française de Sociologie, VII, 4, 435-455 Morin, E. (1987): Penser l'Europe. Paris: Seuil Moscati, R. (1987): Aspetti della condizione giovanile nel Mezzogiorno. Inchiesta: Gennaio-Giugno, 9-22 Mühlfeld, C., Windolf, P., Lampert, N. and Krüger, H. (1981): Auswertungsprobleme offener Interviews. Soziale Welt, 32, 325-352 Müller, H.-U. (1991): Familie und Wohnen - Wohnung und Wohnumfeld. In Bertram, H. (Ed.): Die Familie in Westdeutschland. Opladen: Leske + Budrich, 311-349 Myrdal, A. (1945): Nation and Family. The Swedish Experiment in Democratic Family and Population Policy. London: Kegan Paul/Trench, Trubner & Co. Ltd.

302

References

Näre, S. (1992): Tyttöjen ja poikien sankarikäsityksiä. Helsinki: Kansalaiskasvatuksen keskus Näre, S. and Lähteenmaa, J. (1992): Moderni suomalainen tyttöys. In Näre, S. and Lähteenmaa, J. (Eds.): Letit liehumaan. Tyttökulttuuri murroksessa. Tampere: SKS Näsman, E. (1992): Parental leave - a workplace issue. Stockholm: SRRD-73, Stockholm University Näsman, E. (1993): Childhood as a Social Phenomenon. National Report Sweden. Wien: Eurosocial Report 36/15, Wien: European Centre Näsman, E. (1994): Individualization and Institutionalization of Childhood in Today's Europe. In Qvortrup, J. et al. (Eds.): Childhood Matters. Frankfixrt am Main: Campus, 165-187 Näsman, E. (forthcoming): Föräldraskapets handlingsutrymme i könspräglade yrken och arbetsplatser. Stockholm: Demography Unit, Stockholm University Näsman, E. and von Gerber, C. (1994): Vi i 5an. Om skolan och arbetslösheten. Uppsala: Department of Sociology, Uppsala University NCS (National Commission on Statistics) (1992): Population Census 1992. Bucuresti NCS (National Commission on Statistics) (1993): Operational Statistical Information. Bucuresti Neubauer, E. (1994): Alleinerziehende in den zwölf Ländern der EG. Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte, 7-8, 14-21 Newell, P. (1991): The UN Convention and Children's Rights in the UK. London: National Children's Bureau Nikitina, E. (1994): Kak i Gde Zarabatyvayut Detyi. [How and where children earn money ] Argumenty i Facti, 7, 5 Nisbet, R., Kuhn S. T. and White, L. (1972): Social Change. Oxford: Basil Blackwell O'Hare, W. P. (1985): Poverty in America: trends and new patterns. Population Bulletin, 40, 3 Oberste-Lehn, H. and Wende, W. (Eds.) (1990): Handbuch internationale Jugendarbeit. Interkulturelles Lernen. Düsseldorf: der kleine verlag OECD (Organisation for Economic and Cultural Development) (1988): Employment Outlook. September, Paris: OECD OECD (1992): Employment Outlook, July. Paris: OECD OFAJ/DFJW (Ed.) (1992): Mobilité et Identité. Etudes franco-allemandes 1, Baden-Baden: Nomos (Also in German: DFGW/OFAJ (Eds ): Mobilität und Identität.) Oldman, D. (1991): Childhood as a Social Phenomenon. National Report Scotland. Eurosocial Report 36/9, Wien: European Centre Opitz, M. (1992): Showing Our Colours. London: Open Letters Otten, H. and Treuheit, W. (Eds.) (1994): Interkulturelles Lernen in Theorie und Praxis. Schriften des Instituts für angewandte Kommunikationsforschung (IKAB) 5, Opladen: Leske + Büdlich Otto, I. (1990): Bürgerliche Töchtererziehung im Spiegel illustrierter Zeitschriften von 1865 bis 1915. Hildesheim: August Lax Pais, J. M. (1985): Familia, sexualidade e religiäo. Análise Social, 21, 2, 345-389 Pais, J. M. (1991a): Emprego juvenil e mudança social, velhas teses, novos modos de vida. Análise Social, 26, 5, 945-987 Pais, J. M. (1991b): The symbology of leisure in youth rites. World Leisure & Recreation, 33, 2, 22-26 Pais, J. M. (1993a): L'éthique du divertissement dans les cultures juveniles. In Pronovost, G., AttirsDonfiit, C. and Samuel, N. (Dir.): Temps libre et modernité. Melanges en l'honneur de Joffre Dumazedier. Paris: L'Harmattan, 293-303 Pais, J. M. (1993b): Culturas Juvenis. Lisbon: Imprensa Nacional, Casa da Moeda Pais, J. M. and Santos, C. (1989): Os jovens e a cidade. In Centro de Estudos dos Povos e Culturas de Expressâo Portuguesa: A Cidade em Portugal. Lisbon: Universidade Católica Portuguesa Parsons, T. (1970): Some considerations on the theory of social change. In Eisenstadt, S. N. (Ed.): Readings in Social Evolution and Development. Oxford: Pergamon, 95-139

References

303

Petmetzidou-Tsoulouvi, M. (1987): Social Class and the Mechanisms of Social Reproduction. Athens: Exantas Petrinioti, X. (1990): Women's Work, Some Statistical Data. O Agonas tis Gynaikas, 41, 28-36 Pettersson, L.-O. (1988): Hushâllens arbetstider. Stockholm: Arbetstidskommittéen (mimeo) Philippov, F. (1976): Vseobschee srednee obrasovaniey SSSR. Sotsiologitcheskie Problemy. [Compulsory secondary education in the USSR. Sociological Problems ] Moscow: Mysl Philippov, F. (1980): Sotsiologiaya Obrazovaniaya. [Sociology of Education.] Moscow: Nauka Phoenix, A. (1991): Young Mothers? Cambridge: Polity Phoenix, A. and Tizard, B. (in preparation): The Social Identities of Young Londoners. London: Routledge Piaget, J. (1969): The Child's Conception of Time. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul Ltd. Piccone Stella, S. (1979): Ragazze del Sud. Roma. Editori Riuniti Piselli, F. (1981): Parentela e emigrazione. Torino: Einaudi Piatt, A. M. (1977): The Child Savers. 2nd enlarged edition, Chicago: University of Chicago Press Plewig, H.-J. (1994): Das 'Kindeswohl' - Grenzen der Sozialdisziplinierung durch Kinderrechte. In Steindorff, C. (1994): Vom Kindeswohl zu den Kinderrechten. Neuwied: Luchterhand, 7-20 Porubjak, M. (1992): Uzneseni Vlàdy CR ze dne 23.10.91 c.423 o navraceni majetku SZM lidu a jeho vyuziti v CR. Bratislava Postman, N. (1982): The Disappearance of Childhood. New York: Delacorte Press Preston, S. H. (1984): Children and the elderly: divergent paths for the America's dependents. Demography, 21, 4, 435-454. Preston, S. H. (1988): Age-structural influences on public transfers to dependents. In Riley, M. W. (Ed. in association with Huber, J. B. and Hess, B. B.): Social Change and the Life Course. Vol. 1: Social Structures & Human Lives, Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage Preuss-Lausitz, U. (1993): Die Kinder des Jahrhunderts. Zur Pädagogik der Vielfalt im Jahr 2000. Weinheim/Basel: Beltz Preuss-Lausitz, U., Karsten, M. E„ Kulke, C., Rabe-Kleberg, U., Rolff, H.-G., Thunemeyer, B., Schütze, Y., Seidl, P., Zeiher, H. and Zimmermann, P. (1983): Kriegskinder, Konsumkinder, Krisenkinder. Weinheim/Basel: Beltz Preuss-Lausitz, U„ Rülcker, T. and Zeiher, H. (Eds.) (1990): Selbständigkeit für Kinder - die große Freiheit? Weinheim/Basel: Beltz Projektgruppe Bildungsmoratorium (1994): Kindersurvey 1993. Grundauszählung nach Geschlecht und West-/Ostdeutschland. Broschüre 8, Siegen: Universität Siegen Prost, A. (1981): Mariage, jeunesse et société à Orléans en 1911. Annales ESC, juiliet-août, 4, 672-701 Putnam, R. (1993): Making Democracy Work. Civic Traditions in Modern Italy. Princeton: Princeton University Press Puuronen, V. (1992): Youth organisations in changing society. In Lähteenmaa, J. and Siurala, L. (Eds.): Youth and Change. Youth Research Society Studies 192, Helsinki: Statistics Finland, 63-69 Qvortrup, J. (1990): Born forgâr, barndommen bestâr. Dansk Sociologi, 1, 1, 35-55 Qvortrup, J. (1990): Childhood as a social phenomenon. An introduction to a series of national reports. Eurosocial Reports 36, Wien: European Centre Qvortrup, J. (1993): Die soziale Definition von Kindheit. In: Markefka, M. and Nauck, B. (Eds.): Handbuch der Kindheitsforschung. Neuwied: Luchterhand, 109-124 Qvortrup, J. (1994): Childhood Matters: an Introduction. In Bardy, M., Qvortrup, J., Sgritta, G. and Wintersberger, H. (Eds.): Childhood Matters: Social Theory, Practice and Politics. Avebury/Wien: Aldershot/European Centre, 1-23 Qvortrup, J. (1995): From useful to useful: the historical continuity in children's constructive participation. In Ambert, A.-M. (Ed.): Theory and Linkages Between Theory and Research on Children/ Childhood. Sociological Studies of Children (special volume), Greenwich, Connecticut: JAI Press

304

References

Qvortrup, J., Bardy, M., Sgntta, G. and Wintersberger, H. (Eds.) (1994): Childhood Matters. Social Theory, Practice and Politics. Aldershot/Wien: Avebury/European Centre Rädda Barnen (1991): 0-17, fakta om barn och ungdomar i Sverige. Stockholm: Rädda Barnen Radulian, V. (Ed.) (1993): White Book of the Rumanian Child. Bucuresti: UNICEF/Institute of Educational Sciences Reinert, G.-B. and Zinnecker, J. (Eds.) (1978): Schüler im Schulbetrieb. Berichte und Bilder vom Lernalltag, von Lernpausen und vom Lernen in den Pausen. Reinbek: Rowohlt Reinicke, M. (1989): Der Zugang des Mindeijährigen zum Zivilprozeß. Ein Problem der 'Grundrechtsmündigkeit'. Berlin: Duncker and Humbolt Reyneri, E. (1979): La catena migratoria. Bologna: Il Mulino RFV (1992): Socialförsäkringsstatistik Fakta 1992. Stockholm: Riksförsäkringsverket RFV (1994): Frân Moderskap tili Föräldraskap. Stockholm: Riksförsäkringsverket redovisar Riffault, H. (Ed.) (1994): Les valeurs des français. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France Roberts, R. (1992): 'Europe': the construction of a cultural identity. Paper presented at the BSA Annual Conference A New Europe? University of Kent at Canterbury, April (mimeo) Röcklingen A.-S. (1987): Hur används föräldraförsäkringen? Barnfamiljerna och arbetslivet. Stockholm: Socialdepartementet Rodgers, G. and Standing, G. (1981): Child-Work, Poverty and Underdevelopment. Genève: ILO Rogoff, B. and Morelli, G. (1989): Perspectives on Children's Development from Cultural Psychology. American Psychologist, 44, 2, 343-348 Rolff, H.-G. et al. (Eds.) (1980-1994): Jahrbuch für Schulentwicklung. 8 Vols., Weinheim/Basel: Juventa Roniger, L. (1987): Social Stratification in Southern Italy. In Eisenstadt, S. N., Roniger, L. and Seligman, A. (Eds ): Centre Formation, Protest Movements and Class Structure in Europe and the United States. London: Frances Pinter, 135-160 Room, G., Lawson, R. and Laczko, F. (1989): New poverty in the European Community. Policy and Politics, 17, 2, 165-176 Rowntree, B. S. (1941): Poverty and Progress. A Second Social Survey of York. London: Longmans and Green Rutkevitch, M. N. and Rubina, L. Y. (1988): Obschestvennyc Potrebnosty, Systema obrazovaniaya, Molodezh. [Societal Needs, Education Systems, Young People.] Moscow: Politisdat Rydenstam, K. (1992): I tid och otid. En undersökning om kvinnors och mäns tidsanvändning 1990/1991. Levnadsförhällanden rapport 79, Stockholm: Statistics Sweden Sampson, E. (1989): The Challenge of Social Change for Psychology. Globalization and Psychology's Theory of the Person. American Psychologist, 44, 6, 914 - 921 Sandqvist, K. (1987): Fathers and Family Work in Two Cultures. Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell Saporiti, A. and Sgritta, G. (1990): Childhood as a social phenomenon. National report: Italy. Eurosocial Report 36/2, Wien: European Centre Sarpellon, G. (1993): Ripensare la povertà. Dall'oblio all'abuso, ovvero da Giobbe a Sisifo. In Palumbo, M. (a cura di): Classi, disuguaglianza e povertà. Milano: F. Angeli Saulle, M. R. (Ed.) (1994): La convenzione dei diritti dei minori e l'ordinamento italiano. Napoli: Edizione Scientifichie Italiane Schlesinger, P. (1991): Media, State and Nation: Political Violence and Collective Identities. London: Sage. Schmidt, S. W„ Scott, J. C., Lande, C. H„ and Guasti, L. (Eds.) (1976): Friends, Followers and Factions. Berkeley: University of California Press Schnack, D. and Neutzling, R. (1990): Kleine Helden in Not. Jungen auf der Suche nach Männlichkeit. Reinbek: Rowohlt Schütze, F. (1983): Biographieforschung und narratives Interview. Neue Praxis, 13, 283-293 Schwartz, T. (Ed.) (1976): Socialization as Cultural Communication. Berkeley: University of California

References

305

Sgritta, G. (1991): Iniquità generazionale e logica delle compatibilità. In Ministero dell'Interno, Direzione Generale dei Servizi Civili (a cura di): Politiche sociali per l'infanzia e l'adolescenza. Milano: Unicopli Sgritta, G. (1993): Povertà e disuguaglianza economica in Italia: forme, luoghi ed età. Tutela, Anno VIII, 2/3, (Giugno-Settembre), 30-44 Sgritta, G. (1994): The generational division of welfare: equity and conflict. In Qvortrup, J. et al. (Eds.): Childhood Matters. Social Theory, Practice and Politics. Avebury/Vienna: Aldershot/European Centre Sgritta, G. and Innocenti, G. (1993): La povertà. In Paci, M. (a cura di): Le dimensioni della disuguaglianza. Rapporto della Fondazione Cespe sulla disuguaglianza sociale in Italia, Bologna: Il Mulino Sgritta, G. and Saporiti, A. (1989): Myth and reality in the discovery and representation of childhood. In Close, P. (Ed.): Family divisions and inequalities in modern society. London: Macmillan Shields, J. (1992): Race: France's New Political Agenda. Paper presented to the Political Studies Association Conference, Belfast, 7-9 April Shoubkin, V. (Ed.) (1984): Trudyaschayasya Molodezh: Obrazovanie, Professiya, Mobilnost. [Working Young People: Education, Profession, Mobility.] Moscow: Nauka Shoubkin, V. and Cherednichenko, G. (1985): Molodezh Vstupaet v Zhizn. [Young People Entering Adult Life] Moscow: Musi Siebert, R. (1989): Il Sud delle donne: potenzialita', interessi, desideri. Daedalus, 2, 87-106 Siebert, R. (1991): E' femmina pero' e' bella. Tre generazioni di donne al Sud. Torino: Rosenberg & Sellier Siebter Jugendbericht (1986): Jugendhilfe und Familie - die Entwicklung familienunterstiitzender Leistungen der Jugendhilfe und ihre Perspektiven. Bonn: Deutscher Bundestag Signorelli, A. (1988): L'incertezza del diritto. Clientelismo politico e innovazione nel Mezzogiorno degli anni '80. Problemi del Socialismo, 2/3, 256-272 Signorelli, A. (1989): Famiglia, lavoro, potere: le trasformazioni culturali. In Catanzaro, R. (Ed ): Società' politica e cultura nel Mezzogiorno. Milano: F. Angeli, 29-41 Signorelli, A. (1992): Diritti e favori. In Cerase, F.P. (Ed.): Dopo il familismo, cosa? Milano: F. Angeli, 52-62 Simmel, G. (1964): Faithfulness and Gratitude. In WolfT, H. K. (Ed.): The Sociology of Georg Simmel. New York/London: The Free Press, 379-395 Siurala, Lasse (1991a): Nuorten muuttuva suhde tyòhon, koulunkàyntiin ja kulutukseen. In Lahteenmaa, J. and Siurala, L. (Eds.): Nuoret ja muutos. Tilastokeskus ja Nuorisotutkimusseura. Helsinki Siurala, Lasse (1991b): Urbaanin nuoren vapaa-aika. Helsinki: Helsingin kaupungin tietokeskus Siurala, L. (1993): Modernisation, Youth and Educational Policy Issues: a Finnish Perspective. In Chisholm, L. and Liebau, E. (Eds ): Youth, Social Change and Education. Journal of Education Policy Special Issue: 8, 1 Skolnick, A. (1991): Embattled Paradise. Basic Books: Harper Collins SKTF (1993): Barnomsorg och skola bar 40% av alia kommunala besparingar, SKTF-undersokning av neddragningar i 20 kommuner. Stockholm: SKTF Smena (1990): S cim si Rada nevie rady. (Hupka, J.) 23 October Smena (1991/1): Zasa ten nestastny majetok. 16 January Smena (1991/2): Ucty zatvorené, problém otvoreny. 14 February Smena (1991/3): Sklzov sme sa nezbavili. 14 May Smena (1991/4): Fond mlàdeze dostal kosom. 14 March Smena (1991/5): Stràca sa, mina sa .... 18 September Smith, A. (1984): Ethnic Myths and Ethnic revivals. Archives Européennes de Sociologie, 24, 3, 283-303. Socialstyrelsen (1993a): Barns villkor - barnomsorg i foràndring Stockholm

306

References

Socialstyrelsen (1993b): Barns villkor - i förändringstider. Stockholm Sommerville, J. (1982): The Rise and Fall of Childhood. Beverly Hills/London/New Delhi: Sage Sorensen, E. (1989): The Wage Effects of Occupational Sex Composition: A Review and New Findings. In Hill, M. A. and Killingsworth, M. R: (Eds.): Comparable Worth: Analyses and Evidence. Ithaca: ILR Press/New York State School of Industrial and Labor Relations, Cornell University, 57-79 Stafseng, O. (1994): Youth and Associative Life: Slovakia, Czechia and Germany. Strasbourg: European Youth Foundation Startseva, N. (1985): Rol Systemy Obrasovania v Podgotovke Molodoi Smeny Rabochego Classa. [The Role of the Education System in Training of the Young Working Class.] Moscow: AON Statistics Sweden (1990): Census. Stockholm: Statistics Sweden Statistics Sweden (1991): Demograiiska rapporter 1991:1. Stockholm: Statistics Sweden Statistics Sweden (1994): Statistical Yearbook 1994. Stockholm: Statistics Sweden Statistics Sweden (1994): Fakta om den svenska familjen - sammansättning och förändruing frän barndom till álderdom. 94:2, Stockholm: Statistics Sweden Steindorff, C. (Ed.) (1994): Vom Kindeswohl zu den Kinderrechten. Neuwied: Luchterhand Sulkunen, P. (1994): Towards a Theory of the New Consumer Society - a Reappraisal. Paper presented at the World Congress of Sociology, Bielefeld/FRG, July Sundström, M. (1987): A Study in the Growth of Part-time Work in Sweden. Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell Siinker, H. (1991): Childhood, Subjectivity and Prevention. In Albrecht, G. and Otto, H. U. (Eds ): Social Prevention. Theoretical Controversies and Strategies of Evaluation. Berlin/New York: de Gruyter, 143-156 Siinker, H. (1991a): Das Kind als Subjekt? Widersprüche, 11, 7-18 Siinker, H. (1991b): Kinder und Armut. Neue Praxis, 21,316-324 Siinker, H. (1993): Childhood as a Social Phenomenon: Socialization, Individualization, Institutionalization. In Qvortnip, J. (Ed ): Childhood as a Social Phenomenon: Lessons from an International Projekt. Wien: European Centre, 91-104 Survey of Portuguese Young People (1987): Juventude Portuguesa. Situacöes, Problemas, Aspiraföes. Instituto da Juventude and the Institute of Social Sciences. 8 Vols., Lisboa: Universidade Lisboa Sztompka, P. (1993): The Sociology of Social Change. Oxford: Blackwell Taylor, C. (1989): Sources of the Self - The Making of the Modern Identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Taylor-Gooby, P. (1991): Social Change, Social Welfare and Social Science. New York: HarvesterWheatsheaf Terre des Hommes (1992): Materialien UN-Konvention über die Rechte der Kinder. Osnabrück: tdh Therborn, G. (1993): The Politics of Childhood: The Rights of Children in Modern Times. In Castles, F. G. (Ed ): Families of Nations. Aldershot: Dartmouth, 241-291 Thomas, W. I. and Znaniecki, F. (1958): The Polish Peasant in Europe and America. 2 Vols., New York: Dover Thompson, E. (1980) The Making of the English Working Class. Harmondsworth:Penguin Thome, B. (1985): Putting a price on children. Review article on V. A. Zelizer's Pricing the Priceless Child. Contemporary Sociology, 14, 6 (November), 695-696 Titma, M. and Koklyagina, L. (Eds.) (1990): The Beginning of the Way: Generation with Secondary Education. Moscow: Nauka (in Russian) Tizard, B„ Blatchford, P., Burke, J., Farquhar, C. and Plewis, I. (1988): Young Children at School in the Inner City. London: Lawrence Erlbaum. Tizard, B. and Phoenix, A. (1993): Black, White or Mixed Race? Race and racism in the lives of young people of mixed parentage. London: Routledge Tolstobrach, N. (1994): Programe interministeriale de assistenta sociala. Revista Assistenta Sociala, 1

References

307

Tomaskovic-Devey, D. (1993): The gender and gace composition of jobs and the male/female, White/Black pay gaps. Social Forces, 72, 1, 45-76 Tömqvist, E. (1984): Kampen om tiden, om deltidsbarn i barnomsorgen. Göteborg: Sociologiska Institutionen, Göteborgs Universitet Touraine, A. (1993): Youth and Society in Chile. International Social Science Journal, 137, 421-428 Townsend, P. (1979): Poverty in the United Kingdom. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books Treiman, D. J. and Hartmann,H. I. (1981): Women, Work and Wages: Equal Pay for Jobs of Equal Value. Washington, D. C.: National Academy Press Treiman, D. J. and Roos, P. A. (1993): Sex and earnings in industrial society: a nine nation comparison. American Journal of Sociology, 89, 612-650 Trost, J. (1993): Familjen i Sverige. Stockholm: Liber Utbildning Tübingen Reader (1993): Who is Europe? Reader for the Tübingen Conference, 13-17 April Ule, M. (1985): Odnos Omladine prema mladosti, odraslosti, buducnosti. In Vrcan, S. (Ed.): Polozaj, svest i ponasanje mlade generacije Jugoslavie. Beograd, Zagreb: CIDID/IDIS, 101-114 Ule, M. (1986): Mladina in ideologija. [Youth in Ideology.] Ljubljana: DE Ule, M. and Miheljak, V. (1993): Mladina '93. [Youth '93 ] Ljubljana: FDV Ule, M. and Miheljak, V. (1994): Prihodnost mladine. [What Young People Want ] Ljubljana: DZS Ullah, P. (1985): Second Generation Irish Youth: Identity and Ethnicity. New Community, 12, 310-320 Ullah, P. (1990): Rhetoric and ideology in social identification: the case of second generation Irish youth. Discourse and Society, 1, 167-188 UNICEF (1993): Public Policy and Social Conditions. Central and Eastern Europe in Transition. Regional Monitoring Report 1, Firenze: UNICEF UNICEF (1994): Crisis in Mortality, Health and Nutrition. Central and Eastern Europe in Transition. Regional Monitoring Report 2, Firenze: UNICEF United Nations Centre for Human Rights (n. d.): The Rights of the Child. Fact Sheet 10, Genève van de Loo, M.-J. and Reinhart, M. (1993): Kinder. Ethnologische Forschungen in fiinf Kontinenten. München: Trickster van den Bosch, K. (1993): A comparison of poverty in seven European countries and regions using subjective and relative measures. Journal of Population Economics, 6, 3, 235-259 van Dijk (1993a): Elite Discourse and Racism. London: Sage van Dijk (1993b): Theses on the Rise of European Racism and How to Combat it. (mimeo) van Krieken, R. (1991): Children and the State. Social Control and the Formation of Australian Child Welfare. Sydney: Allen and Unwin Vanandruel, M. (1995): The Social and Political Participation of Young People in Europe. Synthesis Report. Strasbourg: Council of Europe (forthcoming) Veblen, T. (1986): Theorie der feinen Leute. [The Theory of the Leisure Class. New York, 1899] Frankfurt: Fischer Velev, I. (1991): Bulgaria's youth and change: difficulties of the transition period. In Genov, N. (Ed.): Sociology in a Society in Transition. Sofia: BSA, 158-164 Verhellen, E. (1989): A strategy for a fully-fledged position of children in our society. In Verhellen, E. and Spiesschaert, F. (Eds.): Ombudswork for children. Leuven/Amersfoort: Acco Verhellen, E. (1992): Het toezichtsmechanisme in de UNO-Conventie inzake de rechten van het kind. In De kant van het kind. Arnhem: Gouda Quint, 93-104 Verhellen, E. (1993): Children and Participation Rights. In Heiliö, P.-L., Lauronen, E. and Bardy, M. (Eds.): Politics of Childhood and Children at Risk. Provision - Protection - Participation. Wien: European Centre, 46-65 Vikan, A. (1987): Bams forstàelse av sodala àrsaksforhold. Barn, 4, 35-45 Vretakou, V. (1990): School Vocational Guidance in Greece. Athens: Papazissi Wacksler, F. C. (1986): Studying children: phenomenological insights. Human Studies, 9, 1, 71-82

308

References

Wacksler, F. C. (Ed.) (1991): Studying the Social Worlds of Children: Sociological Readings. London: Falmer Press Walston, J. (1988): The Mafia and Clientelism. Roads to Rome in Post-War Calabria. London/New York: Routledge Weinberg, D. H. (1986): A poverty research agenda for the next decade. In Danziger, S. H. and Weinberg, D. H. (Eds ): Fighting poverty. What works and what doesn't. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press Wexler, P. (1987): Social Analysis of Education. After the New Sociology. New York: Routledge Wiebusch, R. (1992): Kinderpolitik im deutschen und europäischen Zusammenhang. Mitteilungen des LJA Westfalen-Lippe, 113, 60-68 Wigger, L. (1993): Das Recht auf Erziehung. Hegels Analyse des modernen Erziehungsverhältnisses. In Marotzki, W. and Sünker, H. (Eds.): Kritische Erziehungswissenschaft - Moderne - Postmoderne II. Weinheim: Deutscher Studien Verlag, 129-154 Willis, P. (1977): Learning to Labour. How Working Class Kids get Working Class Jobs. Aldershot: Gower Willis, P. (1990): Common Culture. Symbolic Work at Play in the Everyday Lives of the Young. Milton Keynes: Open University Press Winn, M. (1981): Children Without Childhood. New York: Pantheon Books Wojtkiewicz, R. A. (1992): The counteracting influences of increased female headship and decreased number of children on inequality in economic well-being by age: 1960 to 1980. Population Research and Policy Review, 11,3, 263-279 Wouters, C. (1979): Informalisierung und der Prozeß der Zivilisation. In Gleichmann, P., Goudsblum, J. and Körte H. (Eds.): Materialien zu N. Elias' Zivilisationstheorie. Frankfurt am Main: suhrkamp, 279-298 Yankelovich, D. (1981): New Rules. Searching for Self-fiilfillment in a World Turned Upside Down. New York: Random House Zamfir, C. (1993): Saracia '93. [Poverty '93 ] Bucuresti: Institutul de Cercetari Pentru Calitatea Vietii Zamfir, C., Pop, M. A. and Zamfir, E. (1994): Romania '89 - '93; dinamica bunastarii si protectia sociala. [Rumania '89 - '93: The Dynamics of Welfare and Social Protection.] Bucuresti: Editura Expert Zanni-Teliopoulou, K. and Stathakopoulou, P. (1994): Young People's Need for Vocational Guidance in Greece. Cedefop panorama 5033 (available in EN, GR, FR), Berlin: Cedefop Zelizer, V. A. (1985): Pricing the Priceless Child. New York: Basic Books Zellner, H. (1975): The Determinations of Occupational Segregation. In Lloyd, C. (Ed ): Women in the Labor Market. New York: Columbia University Press. Ziehe, T. (1982/1991): Zeitvergleiche. Jugend in kulturellen Modernisierungen. Weinheim/München: Juventa Ziehe, T. and Stubenrauch, H. (1982): Plädoyer für ungewöhnliches Lernen. Ideen zur Jugendsituation. Reinbek: Rowohlt Zinnecker, J. (1987): Jugendkultur 1940-1985. Opladen: Leske + Budrich Zinnecker, J. (1990a): Vom Straßenkind zum verhäuslichten Kind. Kindheitsgeschichte im Prozeß der Zivilisation. In Behnke, I. (Ed.): Stadtgesellschaft und Kindheit im Prozeß der Zivilisation. Opladen: Leske + Budrich, 142-162 Zinnecker, J. (1990b): What Does the Future Hold? Youth and Sociocultural Change in the FRG. In: Chisholm, L., Büchner, P., Krüger, H.-H., Brown, P. (Eds.): Childhood, Youth and Social Change: A Comparative Perspective. London/New York/Philadelphia: The Falmer Press, 17-32 [Also in German in Büchner, P., Krüger, H.-H. and Chisholm, L. (Eds.) (1990): Kindheit und Jugend im interkulturellen Vergleich. Opladen: Leske + Budrich]

References

309

Zinnecker, J. (1991a): Zur Modernisierung von Jugend in Europa. Adoleszente Bildungsschichten im Gesellschaftsvergleich. In Combe, A. and Helsper, W. (Eds ): Henneneutische Jugendforschung. Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 71-98 Zinnecker, J. (1991b): Jugend als Bildungsmoratorium. Zur Theorie des Wandels der Jugendphase in west- und osteuropäischen Gesellschaften. In Melzer, W., Heitmeyer, L., Liegle, J. and Zinnecker, J. (Eds.): Osteuropäische Jugend im Wandel. Weinheim/München: Juventa, 9-23

Contributors

Peter Bilchner is professor of education at the University of Marburg (FRG), where he specialises in the sociology of education, schooling and childhood. His current research interests centre on social change and childhood as cultural practice in interregional and comparative perspective. Alessandro Cavalli holds a chair in sociology at the faculty of Political Science of the University of Pavia (Italy) and was formerly Director of the Department of Political and Social Studies there. He has published several books and articles on the history of social thought, youth sociology and education and is co-director of the IARD-survey on Italian youth which appears every four years. He is currently editor of the journal ilKiulino and is a founding member of CYRCE. In 1995 he will spend six months as a Fellow at the Budapest Collegium. Lynne Chisholm, sociologist of education and university teacher (currently at the University of Marburg), specialises in gender, education and the labour market, in youth transitions and in policy studies related to these themes (including reports for the EU Task Force Human Resources, Education, Training and Youth and for CEDEFOP [European Centre for the Development of Vocational Training]). She is presently Vice-President (Europe region), International Sociological Association RC34 (Sociology of Youth) and founding member of CYRCE (Circle for Youth Research Cooperation in Europe, based in Berlin). Kiki Deliyannis is assistant professor at the Department of Psychology, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, where she specialises in gender, education and women's position in society. Her research interests focus on girls' transition from school to the labour market and on women and citizenship. She is a member of the Women's Studies group of the University of Thessaloniki. Lars Dencik is professor of social psychology at Roskilde University, Denmark. He directs a research programme investigating the relationships between childhood, society and development in the modern welfare states. His recent research has focused on the impact of societal modernisation and postmodern living conditions on family patterns and childrens' socialisation and development. Manuela du Bois-Reymond, sociologist of education, directs the Centre for Youth Studies and Youth Policy and holds a professorship at the University of Leiden (NL). Her research interests focus on youth transitions (in particular between childhood and youth), intergenerational changes in socialisation patterns and lifeworlds, parent-child relations, and the development of youth information. She is a founding member of CYRCE. Vladimir Dubsky is sociologist of education and senior research officer at the Institute for Children and Youth of the Ministry of Education, Youth and Physical Training of the Czech Republic. His current interests include the situation of young people in the Czech transition to a market economy and democratic political system, in particular with respect to eduction and employment, but also leisure time activities and values. He is presently national correspondent for youth research and documentation to the Council of Europe's Youth Directorate - European Youth Centre and is a founding member of CYRCE. He is editor-of-chief of the quarterly journal Mlddez-Spolecnost-Sldt (Youth-Society-State).

312

Contributors

Oliver Galland is sociologist and researcher at the Observatoire Sociologique de Changement, C.N.R.S. (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Paris). His research interests focus on transitions toward adulthood in its professional and family aspects and on the question of generational changes in values. Maria-Eleonora Karsten, educationalist and professor of social administration and management at the Institute of Social Pedagogy and Social Work (Universität Lüneburg, FRG), specialises in research into social education and the social professions (especially as an occupation for women), youth services and the lives of children and young people. Ljudmila Koklyagina, sociologist of education and employment, leads CEDPS (Centre for Educational and Professional Development Studies) at the Institute of Sociology of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow. Her main research interests are comparative studies of social change, especially in labour markets and employment - recently in the context of transitional economies - and including longitudinal cohort studies of schoolleavers' life courses (since 1984 in the Paths of a Generation project). Formerly an expert on youth questions to the Sociological Council of the ex-USSR Council of Ministers and co-chairperson of the RC Sociology of Education and Youth of the Soviet Sociological Association, she is now a member of the ISA RC34 (Sociology of Youth) and a member of CYRCE. Heinz-Hermann Krüger holds a chair in education at the University of Halle-Wittenberg (FRG) and has published widely in the fields of educational theory, qualitative research methods and youth history and ethnography. His current interests include the critical analysis of postmodernism and childhood/youth in east-west German comparison. Jean-Charles Lagrée, sociologist of youth, chargé de recherche at C.N.R.S., is currently Research Fellow at the London School of Economics and Political Sciences. He is the author of several books on the process of young people's marginalisation and exclusion. His attention is now focused on the sociological analysis of generation formation, identities and relationships in national and European context. He is a member of CYRCE. Jaana Lähteenmaa, sociologist of youth in the research department of the City of Helsinki, specialises in urban youth culture and girls' studies. She has published collections about rock-culture, modern Finnish youth and gendered youth culture and is deputy editor of the Finnish journal Nuorisotutkimus (Youth Research). Her Ph.D. on youth culture and postmodernity in the Department of Sociology in the University of Helsinki is soon to be completed. Carmen Leccardi teaches sociology of change at the University of Calabria (Italy). She has carried out research and published works on the sociology of culture. Her main fields of interest are youth cultures, qualitive biographical studies, time experience and gender roles. Ladislav Macháchek is research officer at the Institute for Sociology of the Slovak Academy of Sciences in Bratislava. He graduated from the Philosophical Faculty of the Comenius University in Bratislava. As a youth studies specialist, he is currently working on the problems of vocational orientation, preparation for marriage and parenthood and relations between the state and the youth movement. He chairs the Sociology of Youth Research Committee of the Slovak Sociological Association and edits both the journal SOCIOLOGIA and the ISA's Research Committee 34 (Sociology of Youth) Newsletter IBYR.

Contributors

313

Mihaela Minulescu, psychologist, is professor of personality psychology and personality evaluation in the Psychology Department at the University of Bucharest. Current research interests focus on analytical approaches to personality development which has included research on teenagers in transition and crisis and cross cultural study of value and self-identity. Elisabet Näsman is assistant professor of sociology at Uppsala University in Sweden. Her research interests focus on sociology of childhood, the dynamics in the worklife-familylife interface and changes in the gendered roles of parents and children. She has participated in several international comparative projects and networks concerning childhood and worklife issues. José Machado Pais is university teacher and researcher at the University of Lisbon. His main research interests, on which he has published several books, lie in the field of everyday life, leisure and youth. He has directed several surveys on the social conditions and values of Portuguese young people. Ann Phoenix, developmental and social psychologist, is a university teacher at Birkbeck College, University of London. Her research interests are mainly policy-relevant. They include the social identities of young Londoners; motherhood in the teenage years; childhood and parent-child relationships. Ulf Preuss-Lausitz is sociologist and professor of education at the Technical University of Berlin. His research interests centre on social change in childhood, school reform, the integration of special needs children and the pedagogical combination of individualisation/pluralism and social values at school. Jens Qvortrup, sociologist of childhood, is Senior Research Fellow at the South Jutland University Centre, Esbjerg (Denmark), and Co-director of the Childhood Programme at the European Centre in Vienna. He was director of the 16 country project Childhood as a Social Phenomenon (1987-1994). His main research interest is general theory and methodology of the sociology of childhood. He is president of ISA's Working Group 3 on Sociology of Childhood. Angelo Saporiti is associate professor of sociology at the University of Molise (Italy). He graduated at the Faculty of Statistics at the University of Rome where he specialized at the Postgraduate School of Sociology and Social Research. His main current study and research interests focus on childhood from a sociological perspective, social indicators of childhood, and social policy. He has been long active in research, publications and networking in the field of international family and childhood studies. Burkart Sellin, professional engineer in physical science, is currently project coordinator at CEDEFOP, responsible for research on supply and demand in qualifications as well as for surveys on the development of training systems and the comparability of qualifications in the European Union. He is founding member and deputy chairperson of CYRCE. Irmgard Steiner, sociologist of education, is research officer at the Free University of Berlin and member of the executive board of the Zentrum för Europäische Bildungsforschung in Berlin. Her research specialisms include the study of young people at school and in the family, especially in east-west European comparison. Heinz Sänker is professor of social studies and education in the Department of Social Sciences at the Bergische Universität Wuppertal (FRG). His current interests include the theory and history of social pedagogy/social work, critical social theory, educational theory, childhood theory/politics of childhood.

314

Contributors

Olga Tdth is Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Sociology at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, where she works in the fields of transition to adulthood, family studies and gender inequalities. Mirjana Vie, professor of social psychology at the Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Ljubljana (Slovenia), directs the Centre for Youth Studies and specialises in youth, gender, life cycle and family studies. Her current research interests centre on youth transitions in societies undergoing transformation from state socialism and policy studies related to this theme. Rem Voormann, sociologist, chairs the social stratification research group at the Institute of International and Social Studies at the Estonian Academy of Sciences in Tallin. Specialist fields include gender and social stratification, sociology of youth, demography and education, for many years engaged in longitudinal cohort studies of high school graduates, urban populations, university students and, most recently, the Paths of a Generation study following young people's lives into adulthood in 16 regions of the former USSR. Jiirgen Zinnecker is professor of education and social work at the University of Siegen (FRG). He has conducted empirical research into childhood and youth for some 25 years now, much of this work funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaji (DFG), Stiftung Volkswagenwerk and Jugendwerk der Deutschen Shell, including national and comparative youth surveys. His research interests focus on ethnographic studies of students' and pupils' culture within educational institutions, youth subcultures, status passages and social change. Roula Ziogou, assistant professor at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, specialises in the history of education and especially in young girls' experiences of schooling during the last two centuries.