Call for Papers
Youth and social change across borders: emerging identities and divisions in
Eastern and Western Europe
27th – 28th March 2009
St. Antony’s College, University of Oxford
Youth studies has traditionally provided a rich, interdisciplinary forum for the
exploration of a range of social identities and divisions rooted in class, gender,
ethnicity and place. It has also been the site on which contemporary social
theory – pointing in recent years to late-modern processes of globalisation,
individualisation and risk – have received some of their most illustrative
applications, as well as their most incisive critiques. This conference asks
what the study of young people in and from post-Socialist Eastern Europe can
tell us about the emerging dimensions of social inequality and social change
both in Eastern and Western European societies. Building on youth studies’
long standing critique of popular discourses constructing youth ‘as/in trouble’,
the conference wishes to move debate decisively away from the common
perception of young people in post-Socialist countries as a ‘lost generation’.
Instead, we invite papers focusing on the active ways in which young people
negotiate transitions and ‘careers’ in a variety of life domains –in education,
work, migration, family, housing, leisure and sexuality – while at the same time
being sensitive to the structural and cultural processes shaping the resources
and subject positions available to different young people in different times and
places. In the context of a wider Europe, it is particularly timely to address
questions about the lives of young Eastern Europeans, not only in new EU
member states and in countries bordering the EU, but also in those Western
European states which are a common destination for migrant workers and
students.
Papers might address, but should not be limited to, the following themes:
In Russia and Eastern Europe:
• Class, gender, ethnicity, and place in youth transitions to adulthood
• Rural-urban and centre-periphery divisions amongst young people
• Young people and work: informal earning and new forms of
employment
• Young people’s sexualities
• Household and family formation
• (Sub)cultural formations, consumption, and leisure
• Youth-operated NGOs and NGOs working with young people
In Western Europe:
• The ethnicization/racialization of Eastern Europeans in the UK
• Household and family formation amongst Eastern European migrants
• ‘Lifestyles’ of Eastern European migrants
• Eastern European migrants’ labour market participation
• A ‘common’ identity amongst Eastern European migrants?
Preference will be given to papers which go beyond descriptions of what
young people ‘do’, and are able to engage either with contemporary social
theory germane to their topic of study, or with issues relating to social policy
and/or the third sector. Abstracts of 250 words should be sent to the
conference organisers Charlie Walker (University of Oxford) and Svetlana
Stephenson (London Metropolitan University) at
[log in to unmask] by Friday 30 January.
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