Why are young people more prone to violence today? Why is it important to take care of mental health in youth? Do young people have ethical concerns about using artificial intelligence in their schoolwork? These are social issues youth researchers are interested in. Research with or about young people [1] helps to gain knowledge about their living environments as well as their actions, and thus to better understand a large group of today's society.
The anthology ‚Jugend - Lebenswelt - Bildung. Perspektiven für die Jugendforschung in Österreich’ [trans: ‘Youth – Lifeworld – Education. Perspectives of youth research in Austria’], edited by Fred Berger, Flavia Guerrini, Birgit Bütow, Helmut Fennes, Karin Lauermann, Stephan Sting, and Natalia Wächter was published in 2022. It sheds light on Austrian youth research from a historical, conceptual, methodological, and empirical perspective. The field of youth research has a long tradition in the German-speaking academic landscape, having its roots in the late 18th century. Despite this long history, youth research is not sufficiently represented as a discipline in the Austrian academic landscape. The criticism is expressed in the volume as follows: "Austrian youth research [is] not only marginal in the research landscape, but also as such is not systematically promoted and demanded by politics, [that] there are many discontinuities and disruptors and above all one hardly knows of systematic youth research that regularly and comprehensively generates up-to-date knowledge about young people" (433, [2]). Therefore, this work is important as it shows the relevance of youth research.
The anthology consists of almost 470 pages and 42 youth researchers from different academic disciplines contributed with various articles. The volume itself is divided into seven sections, which shows the diversity of Austrian youth research.
‘Jugend – Lebenswelt – Bildung’ begins with an introduction in which Guerrini and Berger talk about the genesis of the anthology. The book is the result of a youth research conference in 2017; selected contributions frame the volume. It follows with two articles from keynotes on the history of youth research in Austria and on the socio-historical changes in growing up. The first contribution is by Scheipel, who refers to the long history of youth research in Austria and marked in his contribution the most important historical focal points. The second chapter was written by du Bois-Reymond, which offers suggestions regarding future challenges that Austrian as well as European youth research might face.
The second section deals with three conceptual and methodological contributions. While Gniewosz presents in his article fields of application, procedures, and areas of quantitative youth research, Hoffmann focuses on qualitative research approaches, which are becoming increasingly important in the field of youth research. The third contribution in this section is Huber's search for traces of demarcation lines and the question of how dynamic and reciprocal the two life phases (childhood and youth) are.
The third section covers young people's life worlds and the developments in youth. A total of six contributions deals with the different life and educational contexts that are relevant for young people. In her contribution, Lipkina describes the processes of identity development both in school and in extracurricular contexts. Gaiser and de Rijke explore the question of how the young generation feels about Europe, their political orientation and participation. While Zentner and Gärtner address the health and body awareness of young people, Kromer and colleagues reviewed the question of civil courageous behaviour by young people on the Internet. Loffredo, on the other hand, works on aesthetic practices in youth research. How do young people express themselves on socio-political issues, using examples from urban art, meme culture and fashion. In Lindner’s contribution, she looks at the value orientations and the acceptance of religious diversity among young people.
In the fourth section, specific life situations of young people were looked at more closely. For example, Preissing deals with the appropriation of space, stigmatization, and the spatial exclusion of young people. Paus-Hasebrink and colleagues showed the importance of media in the socialization of socially disadvantaged young people. More analyses discussions on sexual self-determination in virtual space to capture potential power effects, and Fernandez deals with the often invisible and difficult-to-reach group of unstable young people. She explores the question of what the street careers of this specific group of young people look like. The section concludes with an article about unaccompanied minor refugees by Findenig and Klinger.
The fifth section of the volume deals with transitions in education, labour market, and work. Glinsner examines the counseling work of the Public Employment Service in Vienna for youth service in terms of attributions and consequences. While Lankmayer and Rigler deal with the connection between labour market integration and psychological impairments, Huber and Maricic investigate the importance of emotions for educational courses and on transitions.
The sixth section consists of articles on youth work and youth welfare. Guerrini and Bischoff work on the issue of long-term consequences of residential care for children and young people. Leitner's chapter examines the phenomenon of the transgenerational transmission of individual and collective memory culture in the context of historical research on inpatient care from a cultural studies perspective. Theile's contribution addresses the question of stable social networks in residential care. Habringer reports on the experiences of parents and children with visiting parents in a (semi-) stationary youth welfare facility. Finally, in her article, Grigori addresses the extreme right's current attempts to access youth work and describes the forms of offers created by right-wing extremist actors in contrast to civil society, state or professional forms of youth work.
The seventh section concludes the volume with articles on the development needs and perspectives of youth research in Austria. The last two contributions are to be understood as an ’inventory’, a status quo of the field and also an outlook for youth research in Austria. While Fennes and Hofmann go into detail in their contribution about some of the objectives of the conference, such as the networking of researchers active in the field of youth research and the initiation of a discourse between research, practice, politics and actors in the youth sector, and presented the most important results of the conference. The volume is rounded off by a contribution from Waechter and Bütow. The two authors discuss the current perspectives of Austrian youth research and youth policy. Based on the current situation in Austria, they identify and discuss possible “docking points” for institutionalising youth research and improving its position as an important player in youth policy.
Overall, the anthology offered a good overview of contemporary youth research in the Austrian context. The variety of topics, ranging from theoretical to empirical contributions, awakens the reader's interest and desire to delve more intensively into youth research. Above all, the density of the anthology is remarkable. At the same time, however, many of the individual articles had a pedagogical focus, which is one point of criticism of the anthology. This gives the impression that youth research is heterogeneous. What was missing were further examples of humanities or social science youth research projects. Another criticism of the anthology is the lack of diverse voices and perspectives. If you read the chapters more closely, you will notice that the authors talk about Austrian young people, but less about migrant young people in or from Austria. There were no chapters focusing on the group of international and global young people. This gives the impression of a limited and one-sided perspective on Austrian youth research. An example of how to include perspectives from young people from migrant communities in Austria was shown by Castañeda and Chan in their edited anthology [3], in which they gave a voice to various young Filipinos in German-speaking countries.
There were also missing chapters on traditional youth research topics that could have been considered from a local or regional perspective. It would have been interesting if there were chapters about changes in youth culture or youth transitions from the perspective of today's youth. Another point of criticism of the anthology is that contemporary social phenomena are not specifically addressed, such as the question of how young people deal with crises and changes. It would be interesting to see how these transitions and transformations affect their youth and life course.
In summary, despite the criticisms mentioned, the book makes a good contribution to youth research literature because it lists the diversity of the various research projects in Austria. Although Austrian youth research has not yet been institutionalized, this book shows that many researchers from various disciplines are dealing with issues of youth and young people to better understand them, their lives and their position in society.
[1] In this paper, I will use the term youth when referring to the life phase and young people when referring to individuals.
[2] Translated from the original sentence
[3] Castañeda, A. & Chan, R. (2022). Common Diversities. Junge Filipin@s im deutschsprachigen Raum. regiospectra.