Youth’s Future Orientation and Well-Being: Materialism and Concerns With Education and Career Among Turkish and Norwegian Youth

Abstract

<p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 42pt 36pt;"><span style="color: #131413; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;">Youths’ well-being and subjectivity are strongly related to prevailing political, economic, and social conditions. Neoliberalism has extensively permeated societies worldwide, changing the way individuals, especially youth, make sense of their surroundings and themselves. There is thus an increasing need to investigate how youth subjectivities are influenced in contemporary societies that are under the influence of neoliberalism. Through an analysis of the future orientation of youth, we can investigate discourses that shape youth subjectivities. In this study, we perform a Foucauldian discourse analysis of the future orientation of youth — high school students, from two national contexts, Turkey and Norway — who were asked to write an essay on their personal futures. We investigate what dominant discourses are revealed in the youths’ writings and how they may influence their subjectivities and well-being. We detail two frameworks of discourses, one pertaining to materialism and the other pertaining to education and career, that our participants drew upon in their writings. We relate these discourses to neoliberalism and discuss the extent to which youth constitute themselves as neoliberal subjects of their respective societies. We discuss how these discourses may also be related to their well-being in diverse ways.</span></p>

Visions of Personal Future among Adolescents with Different Orientations Toward Educational Mobility

“…The elaboration of construct components follows both the previous academic considerations and the insights gained in a preceding qualitative study conducted by the authors (see more in Polovina, Ćirović and Jošić, 2013;Gril et al, 2019), in line with the methodological tradition that has dominated this field of study for the last 50 years (Nurmi, Poole and Kalakoski, 1994;Seginer, 2019;Trommsdorff, 1983;Türken et al, 2016). That tradition of qualitative research focuses on the thematic (content) aspects of the envisioned future based on data collected by open-ended methods.…”

Qualitative exploration of career adaptability of Turkish adolescents

“…This could be explained by the Turkish educational system; it is based on competitive exams to build one’s future, which also means high pressure. Not surprisingly, previous studies have shown that depressive symptoms are prevalent in Turkish youth (Eskin, Ertekin, Harlak, & Dereboy, 2008), and that they are worried about their future, compared to Norwegian youth (Türken, Nafstad, Phelps, & Blakar, 2016). In addition, another study reported that Turkish youth perceived having employment security, good social networks, and luck as the most important factors for their vocational future (Dawes & Bozkurt, 2010).…”

Vision of Personal Future as a Tool for Supporting Adolescents’ Transition to Adulthood

“…For more than last 50 years, as pointed out by Seginer (2003, 4), the majority of future-oriented research has focused on thematic (content) aspects of subjective images of personal future, based on data collected by means of qualitative i.e. open-ended methods (Nurmi, Poole, and Kalakoski 1994;Nurmi, Poole, and Seginer 1995;Unemori, Omoregie, and Markus 2004;Türken et al 2016;Heggli, Haukanes, and Tjomsland 2013). However, with the proliferation of the pyd approach, numerous quantitative self-report based instruments entered the field, indicating its usefulness for supporting the development of functionally-valuable youth behaviours.…”