ABSTRACT
The world into which children and young people grow is changing in many ways, as a result of globalisation and other processes of restructuring. In rural areas of Europe there is a structural decline in employment in agriculture and other traditional land-based industries, while new jobs are arising in the service sector. Many of the old certainties are ebbing away and some writers (Beck 1992; Giddens 1991) have argued that we are now entering into a much more uncertain phase of ‘late modernity’, during which we live increasingly in a ‘risk society’, dependent less on traditional institutions such as the family and church but instead on labour markets and the welfare state, which “compel the self-organisation” of individual biographies (Beck 2000, 166). Our ability to survive and prosper in this world will be more precarious because of the pace of change and the dependency on such impersonal systems and institutions, and these risks will not be evenly distributed through society but will be inversely associated with social class (Beck 1992, 35). However, Furlong and Cartmel (1997) have alerted us to the apparent paradox that while social structures such as class continue to shape young people’s life-chances, these structures tend to become increasingly obscure as collectivist traditions weaken and individualist values intensify. “Blind to the existence of powerful chains of interdependency, young people frequently attempt to resolve collective problems through individual action and hold themselves responsible for their inevitable failure” (Furlong and Cartmel 1997, 114). Thus, social exclusion is “collectively individualised” (Beck 2000, 167). This is an important part of the context for our study of young people in rural areas of Europe.
