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The COVID-19 pandemic and youth in recent, historical perspective: more pressure, more precarity

MacDonald, Robert; King, Hannah; Murphy, Emma; Gill, Wendy

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Authors

Robert MacDonald

Wendy Gill



Abstract

Young people have faced some of the hardest social and economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic and associated lockdowns. Taking a critical Youth Studies perspective, we draw on research with nearly 1,000 16-to-30-year olds in North East England in order to rectify the 'structured absence’ of young people’s viewpoints in national media and political commentary about the pandemic. Our findings contradict narratives about young people as lockdown 'rule breakers’ and demonstrated the immediate pressures that they faced vis-à-vis family and social life, well-being, and education and employment. Going further than most recent COVID-19 research – and in disagreement with the notion of a so-called 'COVID generation’ - we locate these pressures of the moment within the already hostile social-economic conditions that existed for young people in the UK pre-COVID and a discussion of the pressures to come, particularly in terms of longer-term labour market conditions and outcomes. Amidst very rapidly changing political and economic circumstances in the UK, continuing precarity for young people seems to be one certainty. We conclude by identifying some important priorities for youth research.

Citation

MacDonald, R., King, H., Murphy, E., & Gill, W. (2023). The COVID-19 pandemic and youth in recent, historical perspective: more pressure, more precarity. Journal of Youth Studies, https://doi.org/10.1080/13676261.2022.2163884

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Dec 28, 2022
Online Publication Date Feb 2, 2023
Publication Date Feb 2, 2023
Deposit Date Jan 5, 2023
Publicly Available Date Jul 25, 2023
Journal Journal of Youth Studies
Print ISSN 1367-6261
Electronic ISSN 1469-9680
Publisher Taylor and Francis Group
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
DOI https://doi.org/10.1080/13676261.2022.2163884
Public URL https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1182540
Publisher URL https://www.tandfonline.com/journals/CJYS

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Published Journal Article (Advance Online Version) (1.8 Mb)
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Licence
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

Publisher Licence URL
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

Copyright Statement
© 2023 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way.

Version
Advance Online Version





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