There is currently much discourse about generations in the public sphere. A sequence of letters conflates generations and age cohorts born in the last few decades (generation “X”, “Y” or “Z”) as well as multiple categories are used to describe today’s young people as a generation that is distinct from its predecessors. Despite the popularity of generational labels in media, politics, or even academia, the use of generation as a conceptual tool in youth studies has been controversial. This Special Issue allows readers to better understand the key issues regarding the use of generation as a theoretical concept and/or as a social category in the field of youth studies, shedding light on the controversies, trends, and cautions that go through it.

This book provides an updated and fresh introduction to recent theoretical developments in youth studies. It expands upon these developments and introduces new discussions and perspectives. It presents three central theoretical traditions in youth studies, and explores the possibilities of redefining some of the central concepts, but also of combining different theoretical perspectives. After depicting the theoretical landscape of youth studies, the book explores generations and new subjectivities. Next, it examines subcultures and transitional spaces, mediatization and learning processes. One chapter is set aside for a discussion on the body, the self and habitus, and this is followed by a chapter on postcolonial spaces. Before presenting its conclusions, the book delves into the development of youth studies, theory and everyday life. All together the book taps into what is happening in the everyday lives of young people, and employs a methodology that can be used to create bridges between young people’s voices and experiences on the one hand and societal and cultural transformations on the other.

This is a clear, jargon-free and accessible textbook which will be invaluable in helping to explain concepts, theories and trends within youth studies. It raises questions for discussion, with international case studies and up-to-date examples.

As a unique blend of reference guide, conceptual dictionary, and critical assessment, Keywords in Youth Studies presents and historicizes the "state of the field." It offers theoretically-informed analysis of key concepts, and points to possibilities for youth studies’ reconstruction.

Ninety percent of the world's youth live in Africa, Latin America and the developing countries of Asia. Despite this, the field of Youth Studies, like many others, is dominated by the knowledge economy of the Global North. To address these geo-political inequalities of knowledge, The Oxford Handbook of Global South Youth Studies offers a contribution from Southern scholars to remake Youth Studies from its current state, that universalises Northern perspectives, into a truly Global Youth Studies. Contributors from across various regions of the Global South, including from the Diaspora, Indigenous and Aboriginal communities, locate and define "the Global South", articulate the necessity of studying Southern lives to enrich, re-interpret, legitimate and offer symmetry to Youth Studies, and utilize and innovate Southern theory to do so. Eleven concepts are re-imagined and re-presented throughout the Handbook--personhood, intersectionality, violences, de- and post-coloniality, consciousness, precarity, fluid modernities, ontological insecurity, navigational capacities, collective agency and emancipation. The outcome is a series of everyday practices such as hustling, navigating, fixing, waiting, being on standby, silence, and life-writing, that demonstrate how youth living in adversity experiment with and push back against routine and conformity, and how research may support them in these endeavors and, simultaneously, redefine the relationships between knowledge, practice and politics-what the volume editors term "epistepraxis". The Handbook concludes with a nascent charter for a Global Youth Studies of benefit to the world, that no longer excludes, assumes or elides but rather includes new possibilities for representing youth, researching amongst them, and devising policies and interventions to better serve them. This volume is a critical addition to the field of Youth Studies and one that should be of interest to scholars, researchers, and students working in this area in both the Global North and South.

"Woodman and Wyn have produced a text that offers conceptual clarity and real depth on debates in youth studies. The authors skilfully guide us through the main sociological theories on young people and furnish us with sophisticated critiques from which to rethink youth and generation in the contemporary moment." - Professor Anoop Nayak, Newcastle University The promise of youth studies is not in simply showing that class, gender and race continue to influence life chances, but to show how they shape young lives today. Dan Woodman and Johanna Wyn argue that understanding new forms of inequality in a context of increasing social change is a central challenge for youth researchers. Youth and Generation sets an agenda for youth studies building on the concepts of ‘social generation’ and ‘individualisation’ to suggest a framework for thinking about change and inequality in young lives in the emerging Asian Century.

The burgeoning field of youth studies encompasses multiple viewpoints, presenting a confusing picture to novices and experts alike. This insightful text goes to the heart of the fundamental issues and debates that characterize this developing field, giving readers a clearer understanding of its current progress and future prospects. James Côté's lively, debate-focused overview of the underlying paradigms and theories in youth studies - drawn from the overlapping disciplines of sociology, psychology and cultural studies – functions both as an introduction to the area and as an exercise in critical thinking, putting its readers on the cutting-edge of the field. The chapters move from identifying the key 'threshold meta-concepts' that influence research, to showing readers how to critically evaluate key debates in areas that are central to students' lives, including education, work, family, technologies, youth culture, identity and politics. Youth Studies is the ideal companion to youth-related degree programmes and to youth modules in sociology, social work, social policy, psychology and other related disciplines.

Ageism is prevalent in a great deal of current scholarship in the social sciences as scholars fault youth for being delinquent or politically apathetic. Researchers ignore young people’s actual voices, despite their leadership in recent global uprisings, some of which unseated entrenched dictators. Neoliberalism must be exposed in its focus on youth sub-cultures and styles rather than economic barriers caused by growing inequality and rising youth unemployment rates. Ageism in Youth Studies also discusses the debate about “Generation We or Me” and if Millennials are narcissistic. Resources about global youth studies are included, along with the results of the author’s surveys and interviews with over 4,000 young people from 88 countries.

This book explores generation as both a reference to family or kinship structures, and a reference to cohorts or age sets. The principal objective is branching out this two-part concept through studies of tensions and solidarity within and between generations of advanced and robust welfare states. Answering key questions using multiple disciplinary approaches, the book considers how generations challenge advanced and robust welfare states; how new and young generations are affected by living in an advanced welfare state with older generations; how tensions or solidarity are understood when facing challenges; and what the key characteristics are of certain generation types. It contributes to the development of a more comprehensive generation approach within social sciences by developing the concept of generation by exploring different challenges to the welfare state such as migration, digitalization, environmental damages, demands for sustainability, and marginalization. Highlighting the escalating tensions and altered versions of solidarity between generations, this book shows how a comprehensive concept of a generation can create new insights into how we collectively coordinate and resolve challenges through the welfare state. It will be of interest to all scholars and students of social policy, sociology, political science, and social anthropology.