Catchy title for an interesting, if slightly daunting conference  in the London area. My feeling is that they are on to something in their concern to understand better ‘the missing middle of ordinary young people’.

CALL FOR DELEGATES

‘‘Stuck in the middle with who? Mapping out and making sense of the missing middle of youth studies’,

BSA Youth Study Group Seminar
November 4th 2011, BSA Seminar Room, Imperial Wharf, London

Over the years, research in the field of youth studies has produced many important insights and has been influential in critiquing, shaping, and changing ideas, perceptions and social policies related to young people’s lives. The focus has, rightly so, oftentimes been on those more obviously situated on the margins of society and possibly at risk of becoming excluded or disconnected.  This attention to social disadvantage has often been mirrored by an interest in ‘successful’ youth trajectories, leading to theorisations of the youth period largely dominated by dualistic notions such as ‘slow’ versus ‘fast track’ or ‘linear’ versus ‘nonlinear’ transitions.

It could be argued that not all young people’s lives pertain to this dichotomous approach, neither objectively or subjectively. France (2007) has noted the need to explore and develop our understanding of apparently ‘ordinary’ or ‘unspectacular’ experiences of youth, while Roberts (2011) argues that this gap in our knowledge represents a ‘missing middle’.  Furthermore, the concept of ‘ordinariness’ and other similar themes emerged in a number of papers at last year’s Youth 2010 conference.

This one day seminar seeks to explore, analyse and theorise the experiences of ‘middling youth’ and identify the parameters of what might constitute the middle ground. The schedule of papers is below.

Registration is free for BSA members and £10 for non-members. Please follow this link to register http://bsas.esithosting.co.uk/public/event/eventBooking.aspx?id=EVT10173

Seminar Schedule:
9.45-10.15: Arrival and registration

10.30-12.30: Paper session 1:

Susan Murray and Roxanne Connelly, University of Stirling Social Stratification: the enduring concept that shapes the lives of Britain’s youth – Empirical analysis using the British Household Panel Survey

Ben Sanders
Graduate meanderings: taking seriously the struggles of young people who should be doing fine

Lorenza Antonucci, University of Bristol
In Search for Middle Range Theories in the Transitions of the Missing Middle? Using social policy to explore social risk of young people in higher education

Patrick Ainley and Martin Allen, University of Greenwich Running up a down-escalator in the middle of a class structure gone pear shaped

12.30-13.15: Lunch

13.15-14.45: Paper session 2:

Ruth Lewis, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine
Bases, stages and ‘working your way up’: discourses of sequence in talk about young people’s sexual practices

Mark McCormack, Brunel University
Understanding masculinities in a period of decreasing homophobia: What the missing middle can tell us

Linda Milbourne, Birkbeck College
Changing the culture or just the old box? Exploring transitions in young adults’ television viewing

14.45-15.00: Coffee break

15.00-16.30: Paper session 3

Diego Carbajo, University of the Basque Country
The Precarization of Youth: Housing and Domestic Transitions of Young People in the Basque Country (Spain)

Emma Davidson, University of Edinburgh
‘They say it’s bad but I’ve never seen nothing happening’: Finding the ordinary in the antisocial

Rob MacDonald, Teesside University
Plenary/ Keynote paper

Dr. Steven Roberts
Lecturer in Lifelong & Work-related Learning
School of Education
University of Southampton
Southampton SO17 1BJ
Tel: 02380 599 289