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Youth Research in Australia and New Zealand

Johanna Wyn and Anita Harris
Young 2004; 12; 271
DOI: 10.1177/1103308804044509

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RESEARCH
ON YOUTH

Young AND YOUTH

C U LT U R E
Copyright © 2004
Nordic Journal of Youth Research SAGE Publications
(London, Thousand Oaks, CA
and New Delhi)
www.sagepublications.com
Vol 12(3):271–289
[1103-3088(200408)]
10.1177/1103308804044509

Youth research in Australia and New Zealand

JOHANNA WYN
University of Melbourne, Australia

ANITA HARRIS
Monash University, Australia

Abstract
This article draws selectively on youth research in Australia and New Zealand to illus-
trate the distinctive nature of this emerging field. It reveals a vibrant, interdisciplinary
field, which has developed rapidly from its derivative beginnings in the post-war period
to a significant and distinctive field that is challenging theoretical and methodological
traditions and providing new approaches to understanding youth, society and social
change. The article highlights distinctive approaches to youth research that are charac-
terized by two key elements. These are: (a) local conditions under which young people
are growing up in Australia and New Zealand, including the ongoing shaping of
meaning of indigeneity; and (b) active engagement with international debates on
youth.The article first explores the traditions dominating the early conceptualization of
youth in Australia and New Zealand, including the Birmingham school in the UK and
psychological theories of development from the US. Next, the article describes how
these traditions have resulted in a reconceptualization of youth in Australia and New
Zealand. This is illustrated in discussions of the way in which discourses of youth and
indigeneity and of health have been rethought. The paper also discusses emerging
research traditions in the area of new identities and youth subjectivities, on young
people’s participation in civic society and their engagement with global and virtual
youth cultures.

Keywords
Australia, health, identity, indigeneity, New Zealand, participation, social change, youth
cultures, youth research

271
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272 Young 12(3)

INTRODUCTION

This discussion of youth research in the region of New Zealand and Australia provides
a perspective on current trends and issues and theoretical approaches and speculates
about possibilities for future directions. Within the constraints of space, the emphasis
is on contemporary youth research, offering a brief reflection on the development of
youth research in the region. Our discussion of youth research in Australia and New
Zealand describes the emergence of a distinctive and vital field of research. In the
early 2000s, it is apparent that youth research has shifted away from its status as
derivative of traditions in the UK and the US. Today, youth research makes a strong
contribution to the development of policy across the fields of education, health,
juvenile justice and social welfare and constitutes one of the most significant areas
contributing to understanding social change, making links across the disciplines of
sociology, psychology and public health.
Youth research in Australia and New Zealand is influenced by the distinctive
environment in which it is undertaken. Australia is a large, sparsely populated conti-
nent and has a population of approximately 19 million people, who live in cities and
regional towns, largely concentrated on the coastal fringe. New Zealand consists of
two main islands, and has a relatively small population of approximately 4 million
people. While they are both migrant societies that have indigenous populations, the
different historical origins and subsequent social and economic development
between the two countries means that today there are both historic and contem-
porary differences that impact on young people’s lives. Yet young people in Australia
and New Zealand do share some common circumstances. They have grown up in
English-speaking countries in the Pacific that were colonized during the 1800s. Young
people born in the early 1970s in Australia and New Zealand are shaping their lives
in the context of significant changes to many aspects of life that the preceding gener-
ation took for granted. The following quote, which was originally written with refer-
ence to Australian youth, captures the labour market and education policy tends for
both countries:
They would have come to the end of their compulsory years of schooling in the
mid-1980s at a time when the youth labour market was in a state of collapse. Thus
would have stayed on at school as a member of the first generation in which the
majority actually completed their secondary schooling. At the age of 17 or 18 they
would have been confronted with a shift in public attitudes about education. By the
1980s, there was an expectation that young people needed further education and
training to escape continuing high and long-term unemployment rates for young adults
with only a high school qualification. Even university graduates with jobs would be
experiencing employment uncertainty about their long-term career prospects in a
more ‘flexible’ restructured workforce. By the time they were completing these further
studies and juggling a part-time job at the same time, they and their younger siblings
would be faced with the prospect of paying increasing university fees. Of necessity
they are actively and positively developing their own responses to these circumstances.
(Dwyer and Wyn, 2001: 77ff.)

Hence, one of the dominant themes of youth research in this region is the goal of
understanding the effects of social change on young people’s lives. This involves
examining shifts in the way that individuals relate to social institutions, especially
family, labour markets and education. Understanding social change has also resulted

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Johanna Wyn & Anita Harris Youth research in Australia and New Zealand 273

in a rethinking of the way in which traditional social divisions of class, gender, race,
ethnicity and location are conceptualized. In this respect, the issues and trends that
youth researchers in this part of the world focus on are similar to those in other devel-
oped countries. For example, over the last quarter of a century there has been a focus
on the effects of the loss of a full-time labour market for young people and the striking
increase in part-time jobs for young people. The shift towards a human capital
approach to education and the production of educationally credentialled,‘high skill’
workers has also been a strong theme. Hence, youth research has focused on the
processes of transition, from school to work and into adulthood, as they are experi-
enced by young people from rural and urban locations, by young women and young
men and by young Indigenous people.
At the same time, research has been conducted into associated problem areas
related to social relationships, health and juvenile justice. This includes research into
homelessness, drug taking, crime and delinquency. In our discussion, we have empha-
sized instead the ways in which youth researchers have largely resisted the tempta-
tion to frame research from a ‘youth at risk’ perspective. Indeed, one of the themes
that emerges within youth research in Australia and New Zealand is a consistent body
of work seeking to reveal the diversity that exists within the ‘mainstream’. Many of
the studies of young people actively question the assumptions underlying the
concept of ‘youth at risk’ and the ‘rediscovery’ of youth problems (Kelly, 2001).
The first two sections of our discussion focus on key theoretical and conceptual
issues that influence current research on young people. These sections provide a
context for the discussion of conceptions of youth that have dominated research, and
illustrate new thinking about youth transitions and young people’s subjectivities. The
next two sections discuss the ways in which researchers are challenging the consti-
tution of young people through ‘problem’ discourses, drawing on research by and
with Indigenous youth, and looking also at the issue of health. These are relatively
new areas of youth research in the region, which provide challenges to traditional
conceptions of youth and research methodologies. The area of youth identities and
subjectivities is the focus of the third section, which describes a range of studies on
the distinctive ways in which young people are actively shaping identities. This
section emphasizes the need expressed by many researchers to generate empirical
studies in order to understand the effects of social change on young people, and the
ways in which they are blending old and new patterns and actively shaping new
approaches to life. The focus on agency is also central to the following section on
youth participation. Here, we discuss recent research on young people’s role in civic
life and their participation in society. The last section summarizes contemporary
research on the ways in which global influences shape young people’s communities
and cultures in the region.
In each of these sections, we identify the key themes and trends and draw selec-
tively on studies that illustrate these. Across the wide range of research, one of the
most significant themes in contemporary research is the goal of understanding the
diversity of young people’s lives. This is often motivated by an awareness of the need
to challenge the assumption of homogeneity that is implicit in the notion of a main-
stream, and the assumption of deficit that is contained in the accompanying concept
of ‘at risk’.

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274 Young 12(3)

CONCEPTUALIZING YOUTH: T WO TRADITIONS

It is common to trace the history of youth research in Australia and New Zealand
through a series of theoretical and empirical genealogies that trace the development
of concerns about male youth subcultures in the first half of the last century (White
and Wyn, 2004). The genealogy has two main strands. One is the work of British and
American researchers and theorists of the ‘Chicago school’ in the United States in the
1920s and 1930s (Whyte, 1943) and the later work of the Birmingham Centre for
Contemporary Cultural Studies (Hall and Jefferson, 1976; Hebdige, 1979; Willis, 1977).
This tradition laid the foundations for sociological research into the meanings that
young people develop in shaping their lives in particular historical and locational
circumstances. Most contemporary studies of youth cultures, sub-cultures, new
subjectivities and identities in Australia and New Zealand owe a conceptual and
methodological debt to these works, although they have been substantially re-thought
and challenged in recent times.
In the earlier days of youth research in Australia and New Zealand, the tradition of
studying local youth ‘delinquent subcultures’ was adopted through research on local
gangs (Walker, 1987) or groups of school ‘resisters’ (Carrington, 1993; Jones, 1988;
Moran, 1988; Samuel, 1983; Thomas, 1980). This trend also included an interest in
studying ‘style’ as a subcultural phenomenon, as consumer markets began to cater to
(and create) different youth ‘styles’ following the end of the Second World War, when
incomes rose for young workers. As with the work of the Birmingham Centre for
Contemporary Cultural Studies, the local youth cultures were seen to be expressions
of resistance by working class youth in relation to social changes such as the disin-
tegration of traditional working-class residential communities and the broader
economic changes that resulted in the shift from trade-based occupations and manu-
facturing to a service economy.
Many researchers now question the ‘correspondence’ framework of these earlier
perspectives, which imply that youth ‘subcultural’ perspectives parallel elements of
class cultures of the previous generation. Jim Walker’s (1987) study of inner-city male
youth provided a perspective on the ways in which new ethnic cultures influenced
youth. This emphasis also meant that issues of gender were not developed enough
to acknowledge young women’s lives (Wyn and White, 1997) or to explore the ways
in which gender relations are played out within different sub- cultural groups. Linley
Samuel’s (1983) research on young women’s subcultures of ‘resistance’ and the work
of Carrington (1993) on girls and the manufacture of deviance provided important
empirical studies of the lives of young women. These studies assisted in pointing out
the differences between the structural conditions of class society in the UK, where
these subcultural frameworks were developed, and the distinctive nature of the
Australian and New Zealand class, race and gender systems.
However, the idea of youth culture is an enduring theme in youth studies. Wyn has
previously argued that the idea of youth cultures and subcultures is ‘neither simple
nor uncontested’ (Wyn and White, 1997: 72). This continues to be the case, and as
we demonstrate later in this article, the focus has moved even further from the idea
of youth subcultures as such towards identity. This shift reflects an interest in under-
standing the subjective interpretations of individuals, and has resulted in less
emphasis on the existence of definable groups, social structures and organizations
with which young people are affiliated. This shift is part of a wider move amongst

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researchers and analysts towards understanding individual subjectivities and to under-

stand their relationship to collective affiliations.
For example, there is an emerging literature on the role of music in young people’s
lives (Baker, 1999; Chan, 1999; d’Souza and Iveson, 1999; Hunter, 1999). Each of these
studies analyses the ways in which different groups of young people find expression
and solidarity through music. Importantly, this research emphasizes young people’s
active involvement in the production of music and music-based subcultures, rather
than seeing music as simply a representation of culture that is passively received. The
interest in music as an expression of individual and collective subjectivities can be
traced back to the early sociological work of the ‘Chicago school’,which enabled soci-
ologists to describe how young people themselves were capable of generating ‘norms
and values’ of their own, that differed from the wider society. In the 1920s and 1930s,
these studies provided evidence that local groups of young men were generating
social understandings and systems of meanings in their own right – or ‘subcultures’
– generally involving ‘deviant’ behaviour (e.g. Whyte, 1943). This tradition has
provided the framework for cultural studies in the UK (e.g. Hall and Jefferson, 1976)
and subsequently, youth research in Australia and New Zealand.
The other strand of the genealogy is the psychological theories of youth develop-
ment in the 1950s. Erikson (1950) developed a concept of personal identity that has
provided a powerful and enduring framework for theories of youth and adolescence.
He proposed that during adolescence most of the important work of ‘searching for’
and establishing an adult identity is carried out. The phase of youth has been
constructed as a stage in life for the creation of a normatively inscribed mature
physical, sexual and emotional identity. These discourses of natural development
persist despite more recent theorizing that would suggest young people are increas-
ingly more fluid in their identities (Wyn and White, 1997). While many contemporary
youth researchers would not necessarily agree with the deterministic model of
development that Erikson’s theory of identity implied, nonetheless there is wide-
spread, if implicit, agreement that youth is the most important period of identity
construction.
Significantly, this approach offered a psychological explanation of young people’s
‘problem behaviour’ as a normal aspect of trying out identities. Whilst this view has
itself been criticized for essentializing social action, it has provided an alternative to
the perception that young people’s challenges to the social order are pathological.
The focus on youth as a subject of research in itself owes much to the acknow-
ledgement of the identity work that occurs in this period. One of the first large-scale
Australian research projects to adopt this perspective was 12 to 20: Studies of City
Youth (Connell et. al., 1975), which sought to map the psychosocial developmental
steps taken by young Australians in their transition to adulthood. Erikson’s theory
created an important framework for local researchers to situate young people’s
actions and choices in a broader model of youth development.
Lesley Johnson’s study of the conceptualization of girlhood in Australia in the
1950s provides a detailed exploration of how psychological development discourses
dominated both youth studies and educational policies in the 1950s and 1960s
(Johnson, 1993). She demonstrates that ideas about ‘becoming an adult’ were closely
bound up with masculine and modernist norms about autonomy and progress.
Developmental theories have thus been useful in legitimizing the youth experience
and allowing researchers to take this seriously, but at the same time, they have

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276 Young 12(3)

constructed and perpetuated homogenous, essentializing and normative ideals about

growing up that exclude many young people from the ‘mainstream’. While current
theories about the individualization of youth biographies tackle the persistence of
discourses that naturalize and universalize adolescence, the popularity of this frame-
work continues within non-sociological youth research, and youth policy remains to
some extent a site where psychological and sociological interpretations of youth
experience compete for precedence.

RECONCEPTUALIZING YOUTH

The emergence of a strong and identifiable youth research focus in Australia and New
Zealand is apparent in the 1980s and 1990s, with the works of the authors who are
discussed here. These authors acknowledge their intellectual debt to the traditions
that have emanated from the UK and the United States, and a reading of any of these
works will reveal an outward-looking intellectual focus that continues to make links
with research conducted in other countries. Yet, their work reflects a determination
to shape a distinctive approach that reflects the circumstances of youth in the region.
Hence, one of the recurring and significant themes over the last decade has been
the dissatisfaction felt by many youth researchers with traditional approaches to
youth research. In Rethinking Youth for example, Wyn and White (1997) have argued
that the concepts of youth and of adulthood only have meaning within their local
and historical context. They challenge many of the assumptions about youth as a
period of life that have been inherited from developmental psychology about the
process of growing up and about the nature of ‘youth’. In particular, they argue that
youth is a ‘relational’ concept that draws its meaning from the ways in which both
‘childhood’ and ‘adulthood’ are conceptualized. One of the most significant impli-
cations of this approach is that it makes visible the way in which youth has tended
to be framed as a deficit – as adults in the making. It has also served to highlight the
element of ‘futurity’ in studies of youth, in which young people are seen to be of value
only because of the adults they will become.
Youth, Education and Risk (Dwyer and Wyn, 2001) builds on these ideas, drawing
on the Life-Patterns project of the Australian Youth Research Centre, which analysed
the experiences of a cohort of young people for ten years (from the ages of 17 to
27). This study provides evidence that youth is not experienced as a linear
progression towards adulthood. Like researchers in many other countries, the Life-
Patterns study found that young people were not ‘growing up’ in exactly the same
way that the previous generation had. The research challenges the view that these
young people’s patterns of living and changed priorities are simply evidence of
delayed entry into adulthood or faulty transitions. Youth, Education and Risk instead
presents the argument that the perspectives and choices of these young people
should be understood as the effects of social change (and not simply generational
change). In subsequent work, the authors argue that rather than ‘prolonged tran-
sitions’ through youth, we are seeing a pattern for early entry into a ‘new adulthood’:
Different research traditions have made helpful contributions to our understanding of
how much has changed in the transition from youth to adulthood. Nevertheless, after
reviewing the range of competing theories about the disruptions of youth transitions,
we are convinced that it is time to move on from preoccupations with ‘faulty’

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Johanna Wyn & Anita Harris Youth research in Australia and New Zealand 277

transitions to an investigation of what young people are able to tell us about their own
informed adult choices. We need to concentrate much more on what we can learn
from our respondents about:
● the choices they have made for themselves in coming to terms with the adult
world; and
● what shape they envisage their adult lives are likely to take in the future. (Dwyer
et al., 2003)
These questions have also been taken up in New Zealand where youth researchers
have found that there is a mis-match between the assumptions about linear transitions
and pathways through education and training and into employment and the actual
experiences of young people. Higgins (2002), for example, argues that young New
Zealanders are managing their own transition processes in the face of uncertainty in
the labour markets, resulting in complex, multifaceted transition processes. She
concludes that the development of effective education and training policies in New
Zealand will be enhanced by understanding the experiences of transition by New
Zealand youth. Similarly, the Youth First project explicitly sets out to challenge the
traditional conception of growing up as a developmental process defining youth as
a category in relation to adulthood (Smith et al., 2002: 169). The researchers explic-
itly set out to disrupt the ‘universality’ of growing up by focusing on what it means
to grow up in a country that is re-inventing itself from its colonial past.
Theories of linear development are often closely linked with ideas of youth ‘at risk’
or a problem discourse about ‘faulty transitions’. This is because normative models
of growing up account for the large numbers of young people who do not follow the
anticipated pathway by deeming these young people as the problem, rather than the
transition framework itself (White and Wyn, 2004). Challenges to the developmental
conceptualization of youth therefore also endeavour to deconstruct the dichotomy
of normal and problem youth, as we see in the next section.

RE-THINKING ‘PROBLEM’ DISCOURSES: INDIGENEIT Y

The resistance to defining youth as a problem group is especially apparent in research

on young Indigenous people. This is particularly the case for research conducted by
Indigenous researchers. There are some crucial differences between Australia and
New Zealand in the relationship between the government of the country and the first
nations people who occupied the land before the arrival of Europeans (Maori in New
Zealand and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in Australia). The New
Zealand government recognizes the rights of the Maori people to their land and
culture through the Treaty of Waitangi. The Australian government has no treaty with
Australian Indigenous people, and few formal mechanisms to bring about the recon-
ciliation between its Indigenous and immigrant peoples. The different circumstances
of Indigenous people in the two countries inevitably has an impact on the lives of
young people, and on the way in which research on their lives is conducted.
New Zealand research on youth is characterized by the emergence of integrated,
national research programmes on Maori and Pakeha (non-Maori) youth. The work of
the International Research Institute for Maori and Indigenous Education at the
University of Auckland, for example, has played a leading role in establishing a

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278 Young 12(3)

tradition of research on the lives of young New Zealanders (Smith et. al, 2002). Their
research programme Youth First, a national study of youth in five provincial towns
across the country, focused on obtaining the diversity of young people’s views and
experiences of growing up. By taking a locational approach, researching young
people in their own community and location, it did not specifically distinguish
between Maori and Pakeha youth. However, by researching youth in rural and
regional locations, the study provided a space within which the lives of Maori youth
could be heard. The study was informed by five ‘starting points’:
● Economic restructuring, state sector reform and more specifically educational
reforms have had a dramatic impact on young people’s lives.
● Discourses of youth at risk have led to an over emphasis on singular ‘issues’
that obscure deeper questions about youth as citizens.
● Youth at risk approaches were deeply racialized and links that were being
drawn for example between Maori culture and rising suicide rates amongst
Maori youth were dangerously self-fulfilling, under theorized and most likely
wrong.
● The voices of youth were a missing and silenced component of policies and
practices that were being promoted for their ‘best interests’ and their ‘futures’.
● Youth have insightful views and analyses of how society works, have solutions
to offer and would be willing to voice those if invited. (Smith et. al. 2002: 170)
Drawing on these assumptions, the Youth First research programme has generated
insights into what it means to be a young New Zealander at this point in time. The
research emphasizes the importance of listening to young people and of developing
methodologies that enable this to happen (through youth tribunals, which are
discussed below). These researchers created safe, youth-friendly spaces in local
communities where young people could speak and be heard. They found that young
New Zealanders from very different backgrounds felt that they were not able to
participate as citizens in the public domain and that there were high levels of anxiety
about their futures. One of the most important findings of the study is the wide diver-
sity of experiences, identities and pathways towards adulthood. They found that
young people have ‘multiple identities’ and are actively engaged in shaping futures in
which some of the traditional dichotomies (such as rural/urban) have less salience
and others have a shifting meaning (such as Maori/Pakeha).
In Australia, research on young Indigenous people has tended to be framed by
agendas that take up the issue of health for the future of Indigenous Australians
(Anderson, 2001; Hammill, 2002). However, research on Australian Indigenous youth
conducted by Aboriginal researchers (for example, Palmer, 1999; Palmer and Collard,
1993), has generated important insights into the experiences of Aboriginal youth.
Much of this research provides a challenge to traditional understandings inherited
through developmental psychology, of growing up as a process of increasing ‘inde-
pendence’. Instead, young Indigenous Australians must progressively learn more
about the complex and rich connections they have with their people and environ-
ment. Growing up means learning about their ‘interdependence’ within a complex
matrix of kin and environmental relationships and responsibilities – rather than
becoming ‘independent’. Aboriginal researchers have tended to be critical of the way
in which youth research has categorized Aboriginal youth as problems to society and

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Johanna Wyn & Anita Harris Youth research in Australia and New Zealand 279

as victims of change. Palmer has pointed out that research that problematizes Abor-
iginal youth contributes to discourses that construct young Aboriginal people as
powerless victims. These discourses push young people’s own, more positive
priorities to the side. However, referring to Western Australian Aboriginal youth, who
are called Nyungars, he reflects that:
While discourses on Aboriginal youth subcultures can and do get used to transform
governance in ways that do further violence to young Nyungars, the same kinds of
discourse can be and are also used by Nyungars in strategic ways to wield power and
influence the rule of government, putting tremendous pressure on governments to
increase resources and other support. (Palmer, 1999: 117ff.)
For example, the discourse of ‘problem youth’ may be utilized strategically to attract
funds to programmes, but this discourse is then turned on its head by the partici-
pation, agency and empowerment enacted by the youth involved in the shaping of
the programmes themselves (see Parker, 2002).

RE-THINKING ‘PROBLEM’ DISCOURSES: HEALTH

The area of health is another site where youth are often positioned as helpless victims
of social change. Here again, however, we can see how young people actively engage
with challenges to their health and even use the problem discourse to raise aware-
ness, attract funds to services and re-prioritize their lives (White and Wyn, 2004). In
both Australia and New Zealand there is evidence of high rates of mental health
problems amongst young people. A recent Australian national survey of mental health
found high levels of childhood mental health problems compared with a limited
number of children and youth who receive professional help (Sawyer et al., 2000).
The ABS national survey (Mental Health and Well-being Profile of Adults, 1998) found
that young adults aged 18–24 years have the highest rates of mental disorder, and that
generally the rates decrease with age. The different reports also confirm that young
people have high rates of thinking about suicide. Across several measures of suicide,
suicidal ideation, deliberate self-harm and depression, a Queensland study concluded
that 15–17-year-old females had the highest levels of problems of all groups (Donald
et al., 2000: 27).
In response to the weight of this empirical evidence, some youth researchers are
arguing for a more sociologically based understanding of young people’s health and
wellbeing (White and Wyn, 2004). Health policies have tended to draw on
conventional biomedical and developmental conceptions of youth that frame young
people’s lives within deterministic models of development, within which health is
conceived as an absence in young people’s lives – a deficit, and the focus is inevitably
on pathology, illness and mortality. In this newly emerging area, youth researchers
have pointed out that new conceptions of young people’s health and wellbeing are
necessary in order to understand the implications of social change for young people’s
wellbeing.
For example, drawing on approaches that explore the processes of individualiza-
tion that have been identified by Beck and Beck-Gernsheim (2002), youth researchers
have highlighted ‘projects of the self’ that have to be constantly reproduced by
individuals. From the standpoint of the rational and responsible individual in today’s

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280 Young 12(3)

society, the body itself is an outcome of choices and actions. This involves an orien-
tation towards self-management within various ‘codes of success’. A number of
researchers have linked this aspect of individualization with the high rates of anxiety
amongst young women (Donald et al., 2000; Harris, 2002; Wyn, 2000), with high rates
of mental illness and with youth suicide.
There is evidence that young people’s own perceptions match the official figures.
The official concern over mental health fits fairly closely with the concerns that
young people themselves express. The Life-Patterns project found that 42 percent
had some level of concern about their mental health and only slightly fewer were
concerned about their physical health (Dwyer et. al, 2003). These figures are
consistent with other self-reported measures of mental health concern. The Queens-
land study found that a total of 52 percent of young people aged between 15 and 24
years had experienced a two-week episode of feeling ‘sad, blue or depressed’ (Donald
et al., 2000).
However, young people also appear to be in touch with the thinking about how
to improve and protect mental health. Their emphasis on having a balanced life,
involving an emphasis on friendships and on leisure, including sport, is backed up by
the research. It has been found that leisure and social relationships are the most
important ‘protective factors’ against depression. For males, participation in outdoor
activities, more frequent attendance at movies, concerts and plays, having close
friends and socializing with them often, and more frequent reading were all identified
as protective against depression (Donald at al., 2000: 65). For young women, the same
activities were protective, as well as participation in dance and more frequent
watching of television.
The struggle to achieve a balance in life activities has been a theme in the Life-
Patterns research. The research found that:
In addition to employment and education, other priorities regarding locality, living
arrangements, lifestyle, experimentation, leisure and multiple personal commitments
are also seen by them as part of their ‘human capital’ and are already being taken into
account in decisions about study and career outcomes. (Dwyer and Wyn, 2001: 34)
Across many areas of life, including transition processes, education and health, youth
researchers emphasize the importance of understanding young people’s active
engagement with their circumstances. Young people are blending old and new ways
as they move into adulthood, forcing researchers to re-examine older theories of
youth development that have been adopted in much youth research in the past.
The evidence in these studies indicates that many in the younger generation are
becoming increasingly pro-active in the face of risk and uncertainty of outcomes, and
are making pragmatic choices for themselves which enable them to maintain their
aspirations despite the persistence of structural influences on their lives. (Wyn and
Dwyer, 1999: 5)
In understanding the effects of social change on young people’s lives, its challenge to
both ‘transition’ and ‘problem’ discourses, and these ‘pragmatic choices’, many youth
researchers have focused on the shaping of youth identities and new subjectivities
around both youth and adulthood. This theme is taken up in the following section.

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NEW IDENTITIES AND YOUTH SUBJECTIVITIES

Across the wide field of youth research in Australia and New Zealand, the focus on
understanding the effects of social change has produced important research on the
shaping of new identities and the re-shaping of older social relations. In Australia,
Julie McLeod and Lyn Yates have produced important insights into the shaping of
new class identities. Based on longitudinal research in different school settings with
young people, that started when they were aged 12 and followed them through to
the age of 18, their research confronts the analytic difficulties faced in representing
the effects of social class relations amongst young people in Australia in the 1990s.
As they comment:
For the 12 to 18 Project, a project concerned with identity, biography, educational and
social inequalities, any one of these discussions suggests ‘class’ to be an issue which may
be highly salient but which is also problematic. The issue of whether class is a relevant
category of representation and analysis enters into consideration of the following:

● How do we represent the meanings, constructions, values, imperatives that each

individual subject is working with?
● How do we understand their engagements with schooling and the
schooling/biography effects over time?
● How do we describe, (analytically) the processes and patterns of inequality,
exclusion, power, social formation embedded in these young people’s
understandings and experiences, and how, similarly, do we think about
possibilities of change? (Yates, 2000: 151ff.)
Yates points out that while the large-scale statistical studies of students’ outcomes
from education show that socio-economic background is a significant determining
factor (Teese, 2000), these broad patterns highlight the extremes (for example,
disadvantaged schools or elite schools) and ignore the schools in the middle. Here,
Yates argues, the 12 to 18 Project has revealed complex patterns of meanings, iden-
tities, trajectories and outcomes for which ‘class’ was by no means the whole of the
story. She concludes that drawing on ‘class’ analysis that highlights the psychology,
emotions and family dynamics of class experience can obscure generational differ-
ences in the ways that personal biographies are shaped.
Other researchers are also engaging with the theme of social change. White’s
(1999) edited collection on youth subcultures contains a rich collection of studies
about the diversity of affiliations, experiences, identities and youth spaces in
Australian society. This collection of studies explicitly challenges the usefulness of
the idea of a ‘mainstream’ of youth within Australian society. For example, Ani
Wierenga (1999) demonstrates how young people in an isolated and economically
depressed rural town in Tasmania follow diverse and unexpected trajectories. She
argues for the importance of ‘imagined trajectories’ and presents an analysis of the
role of significant people in young people’s lives in shaping workable ‘imagined trajec-
tories’ that guide the decisions they make.
Changing subjectivities and identities is emerging as an important theme. Anita
Harris has re-visited the issue of girlhood, providing an understanding of the new
workings of old divisions and the way in which young women’s lives are shaped by
contemporary circumstances that provide both constraints, opportunities and new

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282 Young 12(3)

subjectivities (Harris, 2004). Kevin MacDonald has also focussed on the implications
of the current context of young people’s lives. Based on a study of 150 young people
in Melbourne, he concludes that it is necessary to move away from older under-
standings of class and to explore how they construct subjectivities and identities
through ‘fields of relationship between actors’ (MacDonald, 1999: 203).
In both countries, youth research has a distinctive quality because of the ready
engagement by researchers with knowledge generated in other countries. Youth
researchers are receptive to and expect to be informed about contemporary thinking
and empirical research about youth that come from very different intellectual and
political milieu and geographical locations. This broad engagement encourages a
critical approach to established theoretical and methodological frameworks. In
previous work, Wyn has noted that while many studies of youth and adolescence
recognize the widespread upheavals affecting all aspects of the lives of young people,
many researchers continue to interpret the lives of young people with reference to
the orthodoxies and norms of the past. In different countries and locations estab-
lished theoretical traditions have usefully informed analysis of young people’s tran-
sitions in an industrial era. It is also evident that
Unfortunately, along with the established success of particular frameworks of research
there has also been a considerable degree of academic closure which has prevented
inroads being made into the prevailing modes of thinking. Measuring new research
against the established literature and the authoritative traditions of a particular nation
or a particular discipline has the effect of reducing divergent evidence to what is at
best a subtext or else a contextual issue that leaves the accepted wisdom intact. This
certainly helps to explain why many of the studies we have examined on the same
youth issues but published in different journals or different countries refer almost
exclusively to a closed corpus of source material. (Dwyer and Wyn, 2001: 201ff.)
Choice of methodology makes a significant difference to the capacity of research to
move beyond taken-for-granted theoretical thought and to open up debate. The recur-
ring theme of youth participation in research – of researching about and also with
young people – has resulted in a body of work that places traditional sociological
theory under scrutiny and in many cases finds it wanting. Longitudinal research and
research based in local communities has made important contributions to our under-
standings of how young people are shaping their lives and relationships. Statistical
analysis of large populations is matched with in-depth case-study and ethnographic
research, facilitating an awareness of how concepts such as ‘family’ or ‘career’ can
come to have very different meanings for new generations. While class relations
continue to be relevant, youth researchers are seeking to understand their effects,
drawing selectively on Marx, Bourdieu and Giddens, but also moving beyond, in the
attempt to understand the way in which ‘choice biographies’ are being played out
(Beck and Beck-Gernsheim, 2002).
Feminism remains relevant, but here too, older approaches appear to be limited in
understanding the complex and changing subjectivities and identities of young men
and women. While young people’s lives are lived in a ‘global’ context, their countries’
distinctive history of colonialism and its geographic location forms a distinctive
backdrop. Youth researchers are taking up different positions in regard to these theor-
etical and methodological issues. Their work is crucial for the development of effec-
tive youth policies that enhance the well-being of all Australian and New Zealand
youth. Youth research is also an important mechanism for bringing young people’s

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voice into hearing range, for the development of understanding about how our
society is changing and for the recognition of young people’s citizenship.

YOUNG PEOPLE’S PARTICIPATION IN SOCIET Y

The issue of youth voices and the creation of fora and mechanisms for youth partici-
pation also emerge as key concerns in both research and policy. Australian and New
Zealand youth are grappling with the changing identity of the state as these coun-
tries undergo an intensive process of marketization and privatization, fuelled by an
ideology of economic rationalism. Youth policy has shifted from a welfare approach
to a greater emphasis on ‘responsibilization’; that is, entitlements have been wound
back and young people are expected to take responsibility for their economic
security. As state services become outsourced, young people are obliged to negotiate
their rights as consumers in a market of health, education and employment providers.
Within this scenario, researchers raise the question of how young people can best
engage with the state as citizens rather than only as responsible consumers; a position
that depends on economic and cultural resources that are not available to all youth.
White (1998) pursues this issue in the context of civic space for youth. He argues
that public spaces for young people have diminished in recent times, and those that
do exist are increasingly policed. Young people’s use of space is closely scrutinized
by adults and by authorities of the state, as well as private security, for example in
shopping malls. Youth of ethnic minorities often report racist surveillance and
distrust in their relations with authorities in public places. Similarly, research by
Panelli and others has found that youth in New Zealand have problematic relations
to public space, and are overwhelmingly represented and treated as a threat to the
community’s peaceful enjoyment of streets, public transport and parks (Panelli et al.,
2002). An agenda to develop strategies for the creation of positive public spaces for
youth has particular urgency in Australia and New Zealand. For example, the trans-
national United Nations project Growing Up in Cities, headed in Australia by Karen
Malone, has found that young people in Australian cities experience high levels of
alienation compared with their counterparts in Norway, Poland, Argentina and India.
The young people involved in this research recommend a combination of elements
that creates an environment to fulfil their sociophysical needs. The urban communi-
ties where young people spoke positively about their experiences had the following
features:‘their communities were friendly and secure, they could move around freely,
they had valued roles, and an interesting street life; rituals, art and festivals that cele-
brated community identity; and histories of community organizations, inclusionary
practices and self-help programs’ (Malone, 2002: 10). Young Australians indicate that
these are the qualities currently missing in their own socio-physical environments
that directly affect their participation as active members and shapers of their
communities.
Another very important stream of research on issues of participation and citizen-
ship is the critical inquiry into the new education policy agendas focused on civic
knowledge. The question of how young people can participate effectively in their
communities and in the polity is coming to the fore in the light of a resurgence of
interest at the governmental level in citizenship education for youth, although this is
selectively applied. For example, the discourse of citizenship is utilized in only a

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284 Young 12(3)

limited fashion in relation to Australian Indigenous youth. Lui and Blanchard (2001:
16) note that while according to any indicators relating to health, education and
justice, Indigenous youth are unquestionably disadvantaged, government efforts to
redress this situation through a citizenship and social justice framework have been
weak. They argue, however, that citizenship and civic participation are central to
many programmes enacted by Indigenous communities to engage their youth. They
suggest that optimal status is best achieved when Aboriginal communities can
identify and engage solutions to social problems through citizen action.
New concerns about young people’s political disengagement have been closely
interrogated by researchers, who suggest that models for participation that are devel-
oped as a consequence of these concerns must be meaningful for youth. Roger
Holdsworth, for example, argues that ‘civics’ and ‘citizenship’ are frequently used as
buzzwords to shape a debate that often excludes young people themselves. He
suggests that for youth participation models to be effective, they must do the follow-
ing:
● maximize control by young people (enable ownership and influence)
● benefit young people (provide tangible outcomes)
● recognize and respect the contribution of all (provide for access, equity,
inclusiveness and diversity)
● involve real challenges and development (be of recognized value, reflective
and responsive to needs) . . . (Holdsworth, 2001: 2ff)
In the New Zealand context, both Linda Tuhiwai Smith (2001) and Adreanne Ormond
(2004) demonstrate the importance of the constitution of appropriate spaces and
audiences for youth voice. The Youth First project utilizes the forum of the public
testimonial, based on the model of the Waitangi Tribunal appointed by the New
Zealand government to hear claims of injustice made by Maori people. The objective
of the youth tribunal was to ‘function both as a structured and ritualized acknow-
ledgement that would provide status to young people’s voices as well as a “witness”
to their experience and ideas’ (Smith, 2001:170). The space of the tribunal, under-
stood as one of encounter and of transformation, allows young people to be heard
and to control what is on the agenda, and who is the audience. The Youth First youth
tribunal saw a diversity of young people sharing their concerns and ideas and shaping
the youth research and policy agenda in meaningful ways.
From a methodological point of view, contemporary research agendas and frame-
works increasingly work to centre youth voice. For example, in Australia, the work of
Maria (Pallotta-Chiarolli, 1998; Pallotta-Chiarolli and Martino, 2001) provides fora for
young people to speak out about their experiences of multiple identity formation and
community building, and to make recommendations for research and policy. In New
Zealand, Karen Nairn’s (2002) work is directly engaged with the issue of participatory
action research and how to shape research projects and alliances across groups of
researchers, young people and youth service providers. Further, both Harris (2004)
and Ormond (2004) suggest that even when young people are reluctant to partici-
pate, their silences and absence must be interpreted carefully by researchers, for
disengagement may be a way to retain power and knowledge within youth cultures
and communities.

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Johanna Wyn & Anita Harris Youth research in Australia and New Zealand 285

GLOBAL AND VIRTUAL YOUTH CULTURES

Perhaps as a consequence of the geographical isolation of Australia and New Zealand,

youth in these Pacific nations have been instrumental in shaping new constructions
of global and virtual youth cultures and communities in the 21st century. The internet
has proved to be a very important site for youth organizing and support around issues
of identity, health and political activism. For example, the Australian Research Centre
in Sex, Health and Society has conducted a study of approximately 200 same-sex
attracted youth, and has found that the internet is a vital resource for forging positive
sexual identities, finding information and support, and developing relationships.
Lynne Hillier, one of the chief investigators on this project, describes the internet as
a ‘safe space’ for youth, ‘where they are free to perform their same sex attraction
without fear of shame or punishment, and where their needs for information and
support are met’(Hillier,2001:124). The significance of this virtual safe space is under-
scored by other research about youth sexualities, which utilizes online facilities as
part of the research methodology in recognition that this is an important haven for
youth (see for example McLean, 2001).
Other kinds of community building amongst young people are also taking place
through new media and new technologies, for example, in the creation of global
political communities. The anti-corporate globalization movements mobilize indi-
viduals and groups, disseminate information, engage in ‘hacktivism’ and collect intel-
ligence primarily through the internet and mobile phones. Verity Burgmann (2003:
294) argues that young Australians involved in these social movements are finding
ways to blend old and new tactics to enact their politics. She suggests they use ‘old
style’ methods such as face-to-face meetings and letters to the press to create a local
identity and to enact protest events, but also draw on these new technologies to
connect up with activists around the world to forge a global and amorphous
movement and community. Similarly, Harris (2004) argues that some young women
use the internet and alternative media such as zines to overcome their sense of
geographical isolation and to make global connections that both celebrate their
unique identities and locations, and also transcend the limitations of place.
The enthusiastic ways in which the styles and cultural expressions of young people
are shared and negotiated across borders also attests to the creative and political
blending of local styles amongst youth. For example,rap and hip-hop are very popular
musical styles amongst some young people of Indigenous and Pacific Islander
heritage, as well as youths of other ethnic minorities. D’Souza and Iveson (1999: 60)
argue that ‘this positive identification is a response to the “whiteness” of pre-existing
Australian youth cultures and the racism experienced by migrants. The cultural tools
of hip-hop style and music, provided by the market, make a credible alternative’.
This borrowing and adapting of African American and Latino personal and political
musical expression is a method by which Australian and New Zealand youth forge
connections with other young people fighting racism and oppression in other
contexts, and also express their hybrid identifications across ancient and contem-
porary cultures. Non- Anglo young Australians may find meaning in hip-hop because
it provides a distinct and positive identity for ‘border crossers’ whose age and cultural
affiliations trouble neat categories of youth and migrants.

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286 Young 12(3)

CONCLUSION

This discussion of youth research in Australia and New Zealand has drawn selectively
on various research to demonstrate the ways in which particular themes are being
taken up in contemporary social research. In doing so, the authors have faced a
number of challenges. In grouping the discussion of their contributions to youth
research together, it is tempting to emphasize the common themes and ignore the
diversity both within and between Australian and New Zealand youth research. We
have attempted to signal this complexity through the brief discussion of both the
circumstances of Indigenous youth and research about Indigenous youth. Nonethe-
less, it has been difficult to ignore the common thread of researching, writing and
theorizing about social change that runs through this work.
This theme is reflected in the search for more effective theoretical frameworks for
understanding young people’s relationships to institutions such as the family,
education,work and health. In many of the works reviewed for this article it is evident
that youth researchers are questioning the use of fundamental concepts such as
youth, adult and class. Characteristically, this work involves the use of empirical
studies of young people (many of which have a longitudinal element), to interrogate
and to augment these sociological concepts so that they can give a purchase on what
it means to grow up in the 2000s.
In this way, youth research has generated an important perspective on traditional
sociological debates about the relevance of concepts such as class in New Zealand
and Australia. This is especially the case for the development of understandings about
the subjective meanings that social divisions have for young people. While objective
measures reveal that both Australia and New Zealand youth are growing up in
societies marked by increasing inequalities and problems, young people’s subjective
understandings of their location introduce considerable complexity. The shared
colonial history, the struggle to come to terms with what this means for relationships
between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples, and the strongly immigrant nature
of the societies is a strong force for the generation of hybrid identities and a belief in
the effectiveness of personal agency. Youth research reveals how relations of class,
race and ethnicity are shaped and negotiated through institutions such as schools,
and through youth cultural forms, such as music.
The exercise of summarizing the rich, complex and varied field of youth research
in New Zealand and Australia has left gaps and has served to raise questions that are
not answered here. In covering a range of empirical areas of study, this discussion has
not covered the emerging theoretical issues in depth. These theoretical issues are
shared with researchers in many other countries, and include the question of how to
characterize the individualization processes of modernity and yet at the same time to
understand the pervasive influences of social divisions on young people’s lives. Other
emerging questions include the generation of conceptual frameworks that position
young people centrally within society as youth. The legacy of futurity, and of youth
as a deficit version of adults continues to wield a strong influence that marks contem-
porary research and policy.
Our discussion reveals the emergence of these theoretical debates within the field
of youth studies. The ongoing debates indicate that youth research in Australia and
New Zealand is a vibrant field in which important questions about the impact of
social change on society are being addressed, often drawing on cross-disciplinary

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Johanna Wyn & Anita Harris Youth research in Australia and New Zealand 287

approaches. Our discussion also reveals the distance that this field has moved, from
its derivative beginnings in the post-war period to a significant and distinctive field
that is challenging theoretical and methodological traditions and providing new
approaches to understanding youth, society and social change.

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JOHANNA WYN is a Professor in Education and Director of the Youth Research

Centre at the University of Melbourne, Australia. A leading youth researcher, she
publishes widely in the field of youth transitions, health and education. Her most
recent book (with Rob White) is titled Youth and Society: The Social Dynamics of
Youth, Oxford University Press, 2004. Address: Johanna Wyn, University of
Melbourne, Youth Research Centre, Parkville, 3010, Melbourne, Australia. [email:
Johanna@unimelb.edu.au]

ANITA HARRIS lectures in Sociology at Monash University, Australia. She is the

author of Future Girl: Young Women in the Twenty First Century, Routledge, 2004;
co-author of Young Femininity: Girlhood, Power and Social Change (with Sinikka
Aapola and Marnina Gonick), Palgrave, 2004; and editor of All About the Girl: Power,
Culture and Identity, Routledge, 2004. Address: School of Political and Social Inquiry,
Monash University, PO Box 11A, VIC 3800, Australia. [email: Anita.Harris@arts.
monash.edu.au]

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