citekey: furlongYoungPeopleSocial2006
aliases:

• Furlong et al. (2006) Young people and Social Change
  title: Young people and Social Change
  authors: Andy Furlong, Fred Cartmel
  tags:
• school-to-work
• school-to-transition
• Transition
  year: 2006
  publisher: ""
  doi:

Young people and Social Change

Key takeaways

content: "@furlongYoungPeopleSocial2006" -file:@furlongYoungPeopleSocial2006

Reading notes

Chapter One - The Risk Society

• Post-modernists such as Lyotard (1984) and Baudrillard (1988) argue that we have entered a new, post-modern epoch, in which structural analysis has lost its validity. In post-modern societies it is no longer seen as appropriate to apply grand theories to the study of modern social life.
  • patterns of behaviour and individual life chances have lost their predictability and post modernism involves a new and much more diverse set of lifestyles.
  • As Lash and Urry suggest, for post-modernists, ''all that is solid about organised capitalism, class, industry, cities, collectivities, nation-states, even the world, melts into air'' (1987: 313)
• Other theorists have been more careful in their interpretation of changes and have used terms like 'high modernity', 'late modernity' (Giddens 1990, 1991), or 'reflexive modernisation' (Lash 1992) to draw attention to socio-economic change whilst expressing the view that these changes do not represent an epochal shift
• Modernity has always involved differentiation, a plurality of life worlds (Berger et al 1974), a weakening of communal regulation (Elias 1978) and a sense of uncertainty (Durkheim 1947).
  • Whilst the structures appear to have fragmented, changed their form, and become increasingly obscure, we suggest that life chances and experiences can still largely be predicted using the knowledge of individuals' locations within social structures: despite arguments tot eh contrary, class and gender divisions remain central to an understanding of life experiences
    • At the same time we recognise that the traditional ways of conceptualisation class are not well suited to the analysis and understanding of the distribution of life chances in late modernity (CHALLENGE THIS WITH SOC CODE RESERACH AND RGSC)
      • Employment relationships, which serve as a cornerstone for conventional class analysis, and the occupations that serve as proxies for class, have changed significantly. There is evidence that for many, employment relationships have become more precarious and that individuals' skill in managing risk should be regarded as a significant resource. In the flexible workplace, having the resources to manage risk underpins labour market security and the reproduction of advantage. Increasingly models of class must take account of agency.
• We suggest that writers such as Beck (1992, 2000), Giddens (1991), Sennett (1998), and Bauman (2001) have been successful in identifying processes of individualisation and risk which characterise late modernity and which have implications for lived experiences and for the ways in which we represent social divisions
• We accept there has been a breakdown in 'ontological security' (Giddens 1991) which validates the claim that modernity, as traditionally understood is changing - (a sense of continuity and order in events) - which validates the claim that modernity, as traditionally understood, is changing.

Beck and Risk Society

• Industrial society is being replaced by a new modernity in which the old, 'scientific' world view is being challenged; predictabilities and certainties characteristic of the industrial era are threatened and anew set of risks and opportunities are brought into existence.

• Whereas modernity involved rationality and the belief in the potential offered by harnessing scientific knowledge, in late modernity the world is perceived as a dangerous place in which we are constantly confronted with risk. People are progressively freed from the social networks and constraints of the ol order and forced to negotiate a new set of hazards which impinge on all aspects of their day-to-day lives. Previous securities are broken and people's concerns start to centre upon the prevention or elimination of the risks which are systematically produced as part of modernisation.

• Beck does acknowledge that risks are unequally distributed within society and may be arranged in a manner which follows the inequalities characteristic of class society

  • "Like wealth, risks adhere to the class pattern, only inversely: wealth accumulates at the top, risks at the bottom. To that extent, risks seem to strengthen, not abolish, the class society. Poverty attracts an unfortunate abundance of risks. By contrast, the wealth (in income, power, or education) can purchase safety and freedom from risk" (Beck 1992: 35)

• Beck does suggest class ties have weakened and that in late modernity it is not always possible to predict lifestyles, political beliefs and opinions using information about occupations or family backgrounds. These views are expressed cautiously in Risk Society and more boldly in The brave new world of work. In the latter he talks of "A political economy of ambivalence" in which "top and bottom are no longer clearly defined poles, but overlap and fuse in new ways", and where "insecurity prevails at nearly all positions within society" (Beck 2000: 3-4)

• This new epoch is a "capitalism without classes" (Beck 1992: 88). Individualised lifestyles come into being in which people are forced to put themselves at the centre of their plans and reflexively construct their social biographies.

• Beck views that social inequality continues to exert a powerful hold over people's lives, but increasingly does so at the level of the individual rather than the group or class. Beck admits that within western societies social inequalities display an "amazing stability" (1992: 91) and that empirical research is unlikely to uncover significant changes.
  Enter Giddens

• Giddens argues that the age of 'high modernity' is characterised by a risk culture insofar as people today are subject to uncertainties which were not part of day-to-day life for previous generations. Within this risk culture the self is reflexively created as people are forced to interpret a diversity of experiences in a way which helps them establish a coherent biography.

• Whilst structures of inequality remain deeply entrenches, in our view, one of the most significant features of late modernity is the epistemological fallacy: the growing disjuncture between objective and subjective dimensions of life. People's life chances remain highly structured at the same time as they increasingly seek solutions on an individual rather than a collective basis.

• the challenge to the validity of traditional ways of thinking about social class and the relevance of class for understanding the distribution of life chances in modern societieis has engaged the imagination of a wide range of sociologistis (Pahl 1989; Goldthrope and Marshal 1992; Pahl 1993, Saunders 1995; Pakulski and Waters 1996; Sennet 1998; Savage 2000; Bauman 2001). Pahl has even gone so far as to suggest that class is 'ceasing to do an useful work for sociology' (1989: 710).

• A crucial issue here relates to the ways socio-economic divisions are re-created through the individualised experiances of young social actors and the processes whereby relexivity is located in class relations. Reflexivity does not challenge the validity of class but is a central componenet of hte synamics of class. As Savage suggests,

• "Reflexive modernisation does not create the 'free' individual. Rather, it cretes idnividuals who lie out, biographically, the complexity and diversity of the social relations which surround them" (2000:104)

• To understand the ways in which relexivity contirbutied to social dynamics it is necessary to move beyond descriptions of biographies so as to understand the ways in which outcomes that idnviidauls amy attribute to personal agency or regard as deficiencies of skill or motivation are largely shaped by forces that can lay beyond the full comprehension of indiviudals

• Furlong et al (2003) suggested that to secure any outcome, such as gaining an educational qualification an individua must movilise structural resources as well as caaciaities usually regarded as incdiicative of agency (such as motiviation or effort)

• "Adolescents and young adults develop life concepts and attempt to direct the content and compelxity of their lives: at the same time, they are forced to the constantly changing demands of their enviroment (especially in the labour market)" (du Bois Reymond 1998a: 63)

• In our view the risk society is not a classless society, but a society in which the old social clevages associated with class and gender remain intact: on an objective level, canges in the distirbution of risk have been minimal althouhg they can be more difficult to identify as the social exclusivity of pathways begins to disintegrate. Subejctive feelings of risk have also become much more signficant feature in young peoples lives and this has implications for their experiances and lifestyles. Whereas subejctive understandings of the social world were once shaped b class, gender and neighbourhood relations, today everything is presented as a possibility. The maintenance of traditioanl oppurtunity structures combined with subjective "disembedding" (Giddens 1991) is a constant source of frustration and stress for todays youth

• Conditions of doubt penetrate all aspects of social life and self identity becomes fragile and subject to constant reinterretation (Giddens 1991)

Chapter Two - Change and continuity in education

"Education was to have been the means of overcoming the inheritance of social class. However, as presently constituted, the education system favours the already privileged and screens out the already disadvantaged. Rather than defeating stratification, formal education is a cause of persistent and increasingly rigid stratifciation" (Forcese 1997, quoted in Wotherspoon 2004: 225)

• The demand for advanced educational credentials and flexible specialisations assocaited with post-Fordist economies means that individuals are constantly held accountable for their performance and face increased risks should they fail.
• in an atempt to establish a competeitive edge in an advanced and increasingly global economy, governments ahve become aware of the need to develiop a highly skilled workforce. Educational policies form the bedrock of a commitment to enhance the quality of the national human resource base.
• Paul Willis (1977) tried to account for the experiances of lower working class boys in terms of their resistnace to the middle class culture culture of the school, which was percieved as irrelevant to their futures as manual workers. In contrast tot eh ways in which working class youth often rejected the middle class deifintions of success rpesented by their teachers, young people from privelaged social backgrounds tended to develop an awreness that the maintenance of their economica nd social advatnatges was aprtly dependent on their educational attainments. Their frames of reference, or what Bourdieu (1977) would refer to as their 'habitus', reinforced by experiances in the home and school, made these processes of scoail reprodution seem both naturual and inevitable (Ashton and Field 1976; Brown 1987)
• In the UK, until the 1970s, the majority of working class youths were educated after the age of 11 in seperate insittuions from their middle class counterparts. Even where comprehensive systems have been implemented, social class tended to affect the streams to whuch young people were allocated and the examinations for which they were entered (Ford 1969; Ball 1981; Kao and Thompson 2003)
  • young people from working class families tend to move through the lower streams of the school while those frome middle class families tend to follow advatnaged routes through the education system (Douglas 1967; Hargreaves 1967; Ball 1981; Kao and Thompson 2003)
  • In Europe, the most socially differentiated schools are to be found in the UK, despite the widespread existence of comprehensive schools (Gorard and Smith 2004)
• The post-industriali era characterised by a dramatic declie int he demand for unskilled youth labour, levels of post-compulsory educational participation have increased quite rapidly . In the modern labour market, employment contexts are increasingly differentiated and with increased competittion for jobs, individual adademcic performance has become a pre-requisite for economic survival (Beck 1992)
• Caught in a situation where rejection of educational values or hostility towards school-based figures of authority almost guarantee a precarious future in the labour market, class-based resitance ebcomes covert and young people are pitted against each other in a bid to maximise their educational attainments so as to survive in an increasingly hostile world. Peoples relationshiups to the school ahve become increasingly individualised and the class-based divisions which were once the key to understanding educational experiances has become diluted (Bigart and Furlong 1996)
• Young peoples changes in schooling has been seen as a dual process of standardisation and diversification (Olk 1988). On the one hand, the majority of young peopleare spending a greater number of years in educational institutions and building upo a range of qualifications which are regarded as helping them make an effective transitiontot he world of work. On the other hand, routes through the educational system have become more diverse as young people experiance a greater range of academic and vocational courses which are often available within the same educational instituaitonal setting (Heinz 1987; Chitty 1989). Whilst educational pathways have become more idnviidaulised, class and gender remain important determinants of educational pathways and attainments.
  • Jones and Wallace argue that "Paths to adulthood, far form being idnviidualsied, can still be predicted from socail class origins to a great extent in both Britiana nd West Germany" (1990: 137)
• Trends
• Contemproary manifestations of this social aparthied within education are much more subtle. Among all social classes the average length of schooling has increased and although the academic-vocational ddivide still corresponds to a social class division, there has been a tendency to provide more uniform modes of delivery within complusoray stages of education. Whereas higher education was once the almost exclusive preserve of the privilaged classes, in most of the advatnaced nations a university education has been made avaible to the masses during the alst 20 to 30 years (Smithers and Robinson 1989; McPherson and Schapiro 1991; Egerton and Halseyt 1993; Forsyth and Furlong 2000; Huisman et al 2003).
  • (The decline of social class divide in academic-vocational education may be because of changing vocational training and NOT because of any loss of social class impact)
• In the UK vocational options in the school have alrgely been taken up by working class pupils in the lower attainment bands while leaving intact the traditional academic curriculum followed by middle class pupils (Brown 1987; Chitty 1987; Raffe et al 2001)
• Cultureal dimensions of educational participation
• The increased emphasis place on educational attainment in workling class families stems, in part, from a growing awareness of the importance of credentials in the modern economy. It can also be linked to a breakdown of a visible dichotomy in the labour makret between working class and middle class jobs that has accompanied the decline of manufacturing industry as well as a more educated parentage and a trend towards employment in smaller work units where social divisions are less visible. These factors are linked to the 'epistomological fallacy' of late modernity in whcih linkages between objective structures of oppurtunity and subjective intepreations of social position become increasingly tenuous.
• In schools in deprived areas there is often a culture of truancy to which young people must subscribe in order to be accepted as part of the peer group; the strong pull of the social and cultural enviroment can be hard to resist (Williamson 2004)
• The persistence of class based inequaltiies
• Increasing levels of educational aprticipation do not necessarily result in a process of equalisation between social groups (Boudon 1973; Halsey et al 1980; Shavit and muller 1998; Croxford and Raffe 2005).
• Up until the 1970s, males were clearly the educational winners. In the early 1970s iun the UK grils tended to outperform boys in ther early stages of the primary school, but their initial advantages were soon lost as boys began to overtake them in most areas of the curriculum (Douglas 1967). Young women tended to gain fewer school-leaving qualifications and were under-represented in the univerisiteis. Moreover, females who entered higher education frequently accepted places in colleges rather than universities and were over-represented on vocational courses
  • (MASSIVE POINT TO LOOK INTO)
• Girls faces pressure to limit their academic atainments for fear of frightening potential male suitors (Horner 1971)
• Croxford and Raffe (2005) show that between early 1980s and the late 1990s the attainment gap between girtls and boys widened, witht eh greated gains being made by middle class girls. By 2004 in England and Wales, 59 per cent of females as compared to 49 per cent of males acheived 5 or more GCSEs at age 16; a level of achaigvement signalling some merit (DfES 2005)
• Walkerdine et al (2001) draw attention tot he remarkable uniformity of performance of middle class grils that contrasts strongly with the, much more diversified, experiances of their working class peers. Among those from lower class families, underperformance, early exits from the educational system and lives often characteristed by early motherhood and low paid insecure jobs remain common (Biggart 2002).
• Walkerdine et al argue "the notion that all boys are now failing and all girls succeeding has served to mask deep and enduring class differences between boys and girls " (2001: 111)
• Men are more likely to progress to a higher degree (Wakeling 2005)

Chapter Three - Social Change and the Labour Market

• since the 1980s, entrenchement in educational participation has elongated the school to work transition and made it more complex.
• As Giddens notes, social life in hte modern world takes place in settings which are increawswingly "diverse and segmented" (1991: 83). Employment in manufacturing continues to decline whilt the serivce sector has become increasingly signfiicant.
• Post-industrial society is characterised by a shrinking manufacturing sector and the dominance of hte service sector (Bell 1973).
• There has also been a growth in part-time working and non-standard employmen, employment in smaller working units, an increased demand for technical skills, and "flexiable specialisations" which together have been taken as characcteristic of post-Fordist economies (Kumar 1995; Furlong and Kelly 2005).
• In late modernity, individual skills and educational attainments are of crucial importance in smoothing labour makret entry, while the collectivised transitions which were once central to an understanding of social reproduction have weakened
  • (CENTRAL TO 'PART 3' CLUSTER ANALYSIS)
• In these new contexts, labour market histories can sometimes be characterised byt a constant, individualised, "churn" between differenet forms of insecure employment (Furlong and Cartmel 2004; Macdonald and Marsh 2005)
• it is argued that two, somewhat contradictory, processes can be observed within modern societies: on the one hand a trend towards differentiation and diversity which reflect the economic transformations which some interpret as leading to a 'post-industrial' society, and on the other, the miantenance of relatively stable, predictbale transitions which help ensure that those occupying advantaged social positions retain the ability to transmit privileges to their offspring
  • (IF THIS WAS THE CASE THEN THOSE FROM PRIVELAGED BACKGROUNDS WOULD EXPERIANCE TRADITIONAL TRANSITIONS AND WOULD ALSO MAINTAIN THEIR SOCIAL POSITION VIA STABLE SOCIAL MOBILITY)
• In England and Wales, for example in 1988 around 52 per cent of the school year cohort entered the labour market at the minimum age compared to just 34 per cent in 1991 and 28 per cent by 2004 (Payne 1995)
• The recession of the early 1990s saw rates of youth unemployment rise with a reduction ocurring from the mid-to-late 1990s
• Another particularly siginficantn change in the youth labour market stems from the development of 'flexibale' employment practicies. The recession of the 1980s provided employers with an incentive to seek ways of reducing labour costs and one of the ways in which this was acheivedwas through the increased use of part-time and temporary workers (Ashton et al 1990)
  • (SUPER IMPORTANT FOR BCS DISCUSSION)
• The growing insecurity of employment, the increase in non-stndard work, and the emregenece of 'nomadic multi-actiivty' is something that has been highlighted by Beck (2000: 2) as a characteristic of the risk society ans is a theme that has been discussed extensively by Bauman (2001) and Sennett (1998)
• The YTS scheme was envetually replaced by the New Deal in 1998. It differed in two ways. First it targeted older population of 18+ whom were experiancing recurrent labour market issues. THe second is that in theory it intruduced a degree of choice and made an attempt to tailor interventions much more closely to idniivudafl needs and aspirations.
• the introduction of 'guarantees' of work , education or training to young people via the Luxembourg Summit, has changed hte vocabulary used to describe the situation of young people who are not engaged in 'appropriate' activities. Youth unemployment has been replaced with 'Not in education, employment, or training' or NEET.
  • one of the key problems with the focus on NEET is that it encourages us to beleive that young people who are employed no longer require assistance.
    The maintenance of the labour market inequalities
• Many reserachers have highlighted the incerasing complexity of the transition from school-to-work with young people finishing school at different stages and following a variety of overlapping routes into the labour market (Roberts 1995; Bynner et al 1997; Wyn and White 1997)
• Roberts (1995) suggets that a process of individualisation has occurred in so far as these changes have invovled a reduction in the number of young people with closely matching transitonal patterns
• (COMPARISON OF COHORTS REQUIRED)
• Furlong et al (2003) reserached the linear and non-linear clustering of transitonal pathways for Youth. They determined linear/non-linear distinction via the periods of unemployment and the number of status changes. For both men and women, those from the most privealged social origins were more likely to experiance linear transitions.
• There is no evidence to suggest that the class based differences have declined over the period (Marshall and Swift 1993)
• Most of those that experience signficant amounts of time in unemployment come from working class families and are often located in ex-industrial areas that have been badly affected by the restructuring of labour markets (White and McRae 1989; Aniset et al 2000; O'Higgins 2001; Iannelli 2003; White and Wyn 2004; MacDonald and Marsh 2005)
• Whilst society became more individaulised in the 1970s and 1980s, this did not stop sociologists from arguing that transitional outcomes remained highly structured (Roberts et al 1987; Bynner and Roberts 1991; Banks et al 1992)
• This structured emphaisis was underlined by the use of the term 'Trajectory' implying that individuals had little control over their destinations (Evans and Furlong 1997)
• We agree with Jessop et al (1987: 109) who argue that post-Fordism is characterised by a 'division between a skill-flexiable core and a time-flexiable peripherary, which is now replacing the old manual/non-manual division'

Chapter Nine - The epistemological fallacy of late modernity

• are we living in continued structured times or are we seeing the emergence of a 'kaleidoscope of microcultures' (McDonald 1999: 1)
• Beck 'Nomadic multi-activity' - has weakened the collective employment experiances and are associated with a process of individualisation and a sense of insecurity and risk
• Despite the fragmentation of experiences and the growth of non-linear routes, it is still possible to predict labour market outcomes fairly accurately on the basis of social class (via educational performance) and gender. While the breakdown of collective transitions created the illusion of individuality, we have argued that these changes had little effect on processes of social reproduction.