The Many Youths of Hard Times: Observing and Understanding Young People’s Biographical Troubles

Abstract

The genesis of this special issue was in 2020 when both editors joined the organising committee of the mid-term conference of Research Network (RN) 03 of the European Sociological Association (ESA) “Biographical Perspectives on European Societies”. The purpose of this online conference event was to initiate critical discussion and debates about opportunities and challenges for the application of biographical research methods during COVID-19 lockdowns with regards to data collection, analysis, interpretation and ethics. This initial introduction spawned further dialogues between the editors throughout 2021 about the impacts of COVID-19 on youth, and possibilities for further extending these discussions into a special issue that would capture young people’s experiences of hard times, not alone during the recent COVID-19 pandemic but also in relation to homelessness, family relationships, emotions, education and war. This special issue represents the culmination of these critical discussions amongst us as editors, with authors and with colleagues in Ireland, Portugal, the UK, Denmark and Ukraine, about ways of thinking and observing emotionally turbulent times, structural constraints and (self)care dynamics in young people’s “life histories, lived situations and personal experiences” (Wengraf, 2011, p. 1). The term “hard times” itself, potentially at the origin of biographical crises (Caetano, 2021), is multidimensional, and the process of conducting depth research with youth experiencing difficult moments, be it emotionally, physically or financially (or indeed, all three simultaneously), is ethically challenging and is frequently a sensitive and emotionally fraught process for researchers. The meaning of hard times as applied to young people’s lives is contextual and temporal; pejoratively speaking, it evokes Dickensian overtones of brutalised childhoods and adolescence, while for sociologists it frequently connotes economic hardships (Lim & Laurence, 2015; Thébaud & Sharkey, 2016), austerity (Allen, 2016), precarity (Horton et al., 2021), experiences of criminality, gang culture (Foote-Whyte, 1981), and various types of emotional crises, mistrust and traumas spawning from parental neglect, physical and sexual abuse (Tsui et al., 2010). The complexity of young people’s everyday experiences in difficult social conditions pertaining to housing, migration and economic marginalisation are well highlighted in recent biographical research (Farrugia, 2021; Mayock & Parker, 2021; McGarry, 2021). Internationally, this field yields rich insights into the complexity of young people’s experiences in late modernity, showing the multidimensionality of the concept of youth (Cuervo et al., 2023; Pabian & Vandebosch, 2021; Renzaho et al., 2017). Social change processes and transitions are also key to understanding young people and how they go through difficult moments in their lives (Furlong & Cartmel, 2007; Irwin & Nilsen, 2018; Woodman & Wyn, 2015). The scale and depth of political and societal crises facing contemporary youth cannot be disconnected from the fact that it is more “networked” than ever before through globalisation and continuous technological innovations. As the