Review Judit Bessant Rys Farthing And Rob Watts The Precarious Generation A Political Economy Of Young People

The Precarious Generation

This book draws on a wealth of evidence including young people’s own stories, to document how they are now faring in increasingly unequal societies like America, Britain, Australia, France and Spain. It points to systematic generational inequality as those born since 1980 become the first generation to have a lower standard of living than previous generations. While governments and experts typically explain this by referring to globalization, new technologies, or young people’s deficits, the authors of this book offer a new political economy of generations, which identifies the central role played by governments promoting neoliberal policies that exacerbate existing social inequalities based on age, ethnicity, gender and class. The book is a must read for social science students, human service workers and policy-makers and indeed for anyone interested in understanding the impact of government policy over the last 40 years on young people.

Review: Judit Bessant, Rys Farthing and Rob Watts: The Precarious Generation: A Political Economy of Young People

Youth and Unconventional Political Engagement

This book analyses the relationship between youth and participation, looking specifically at those repertories of involvement that are commonly clustered under the concept of “unconventional political participation”. The author focuses on the connections between youth practices of participation and youth conditions in contemporary society. Drawing from the analysis of three ethnographic case studies conducted on experiences of youth participation in Italy and Sweden, the circumstances and the reasons leading young people to express their political ideas through forms of engagement located outside the realm of “formal politics” are explored. The book seeks to bring back the specificities of contemporary youth at the centre of the analysis of youth practices of participation, highlighting their often overlooked socio-historical and generational ‘situatedness’. Youth and Unconventional Political Engagement will be of interest students and scholars across a range of disciplines, including youth studies, political science, and sociology.