Open-ended transitions to adulthood: Metaphorical thinking for times of stasis

Abstract

In this article we engage critically with how metaphors have been used in sociological youth studies, including a turn to new metaphors that capture the foreclosure of futures and experiences of waiting, delay and non-institutional temporalities. Drawing on the resources of queer theory we challenge the developmentalism that underpins youth studies, employing notions of the impasse and growing sideways to capture the open-endedness of young adult lives. Working with data from a qualitative longitudinal study of Danish youth, we focus on how 47 young people responded to an invitation to talk about and through an object that represented the last three years of their lives. These rich accounts can be understood as examples of Paul Riceour’s ‘metaphoric discourse’, characterised by the simultaneity of ‘is’ and ‘is not’. The article first offers a schema of the biographical objects (trophies, hobbies, mortal, connective and protest) that captures the work of ‘being in time’ for young adults, mapping this onto the formal and informal markers of adulthood. We then engage with participants’ own metaphorical thinking in greater depth – suggesting that the paradoxical metaphors that emerge from their talk can expand how we understand the struggle for maturity. The metaphor of open-endedness is offered as a hybrid term, allowing us to look in two directions at once: capturing and comparing transitions as part of a project of social justice, while also recognising the limits of such frameworks for understanding the experiences of a new generation.

Future-Making in an Uncertain World: The Presence of an Open Future in Danish Young Women’s Lives

“…Taking inspiration from Berlant, scholars have criticised neoliberal promises for assigning responsibility to individuals, who are led to believe that success (or failure) depends solely on talent, willpower and hard work (Ravn and Churchill, 2019; Raynor, 2021; Sellar and Gale, 2011). In highlighting individual heroics in the face of hardship, neoliberal policies and discourses elide structural conditions and disparities, thus shaping future-making into a cruel individual project entailing multiform affective labours performed to sustain such optimistic attachments (Mendick et al, 2015; Raynor, 2021; Thomson and Østergaard, 2020; Zipin et al, 2015).…”

“…A rich stream of sociological work has explored how young women, in particular, have become positioned as neoliberal subjects par excellence, expected and expecting themselves to build ‘successful’ futures by flexibly and resiliently overcoming structural constraints (Allen, 2016; Gill and Scharff, 2011; Ringrose and Walkerdine, 2008; Scharff, 2016). With ‘good lives’ awaiting hard-working and self-responsible individuals, future-making for young women has been shown to be ridden with demands, contradictions and affective tensions as neoliberal promises do not converge with contemporary conditions of diminished possibilities and prospects for the future (Sellar and Zipin, 2019; Thomson and Østergaard, 2020; Vaadal and Ravn, 2021).…”

A Review of Evolving Paradigms in Youth Studies

“…As previously stated, studying metaphors in sociology is important, as they can provide insight into how societies conceptualise themselves and the world around them. Metaphors can both enrich and reduce meaning and can be used to escape conceptual traps, create new social imaginaries, or explain complex phenomena [34]. The field of youth studies provides a particularly illustrative example of the importance of studying metaphors in sociology.…”

“…Each of these metaphors has implications for policy and practice and will be explored in turn. It is vital that we continue to explore the imaginative use of metaphors in the field of youth studies to better understand the experiences of young people in our changing world [34].…”

“…Societies 2023, 13, x FOR PEER REVIEW 5 of 18 metaphors in the field of youth studies to better understand the experiences of young people in our changing world [34].…”