ABSTRACT
The current social context for youth is one characterized by high levels of unemployment, increasing poverty, reductions in state welfare and educational services and benefits, and a public culture of competitive individualism (Wyn and White, 1997). These general trends have had a particularly negative impact on large sections of the youth population (Boss, Edwards, and Pitman, 1995). Indeed, it has been argued that the present era is significantly different from previous decades: whereas for most of this century the state has played a major supporting and interventionist role in assisting young people in the areas of education, welfare, and rehabilitative juvenile justice, particularly when youth unemployment was stagnant, the same is not the case today. Rather, we are seeing a simultaneous reduction in youth employment prospects and in state support programs for young people-leading to what can be described as the phenomenon of "abandoned youth" (Polk, 1997).
