Political economy and young people's transitions from education-to-work in the UK during and following the 2020 and 2021 lockdowns

Roberts, Ken ORCID: 0000-0001-7492-9953 (2022) Political economy and young people's transitions from education-to-work in the UK during and following the 2020 and 2021 lockdowns. JOURNAL OF YOUTH STUDIES, 26 (9). pp. 1147-1162.

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Official URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13676261.2022.2077641

Abstract

This paper rejects the cases made in recent volumes of this journal for incorporating political economy into youth studies. A brief review of young people’s transitions from education into employment in the UK during and following the 2020 and 2021 lockdowns shows how youth transitions research engages routinely with changes and continuities in politics, state policies, the economy and labour markets. It is argued that the main weaknesses in current transitions research arise from our lack of an up-to-date class scheme within which to locate subjects’ childhood origins and adult destinations. However, the paper illustrates how young researchers occupy a privileged position from which to identify emerging, consolidating and declining social classes. The conclusion is that youth studies must necessarily foreground young people, that it must engage with the outcomes of political and economic processes but has no need to ‘dig deeper’ into political economy for alleged underlying root causes.

Item Type:	Article
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Class, lockdowns, political economy, youth transitions
Divisions:	Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences > School of Law and Social Justice
Depositing User:	Symplectic Admin
Date Deposited:	16 Jun 2022 08:38
Last Modified:	29 Nov 2023 02:30
DOI:	10.1080/13676261.2022.2077641
Related URLs:	Author Publisher
URI:	https://livrepository.liverpool.ac.uk/id/eprint/3156539