ABSTRACT
In the rhetoric of Australian youth communities, young people are often positioned by adults as builders of society, and therefore their aspirations for the future have significant implications for the structural development of the economy. Contemporary meanings of success and aspirations are often framed by discourses of competitiveness, status-based and economic. As a result, young people are compared against this yardstick of ‘aspiration’ prescribed by adults. It has therefore been argued that aspiration has been co-opted by neoliberal ideology such that subjects must take self-responsibility and create their own value in a competitive environment. This chapter explores the aspirations of a group of Chinese young girls in Brisbane and Sydney, Australia. It examines how their hopes and expectations, and specifically in sport, are influenced by their families and peers of their everyday lives and the extent to which they have agency in the course of their lives.
