Liminality, COVID‐19 and the long crisis of young adults' employment

The COVID‐19 crisis has brought into sharp relief the precarious employment situation of young people, precipitating a raft of academic and public claims of an unprecedented crisis that has disrupted young lives. Our study contributes to research on youth labour and transitions with new longitudinal empirical analysis. Our analysis challenges the "newness” of the precarity highlighted by COVID‐19, focussing on employment. It draws on longitudinal mixed methods data from a research project tracking the transition to adulthood of young Australians. We make use of the concept of liminality to analyse the labour patterns for this group of young adults for the past 5 years. While we acknowledge the impact of COVID‐19 on young people's lives, our analysis reveals a precarisation of labour conditions for a significant proportion of participants that precedes the pandemic crisis. We conclude that the tendency in some youth research and in public discourse, to depict contemporary events as heralding "new” crises for young people, obscures the deeper structural arrangements that continually position the young to take the brunt of social and economic policies. [ FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of Australian Journal of Social Issues (John Wiley & Sons, Inc. ) is the property of John Wiley & Sons, Inc. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full . (Copyright applies to all s.)

The impact of pandemic-related loss of work on young adults' plans

This article presents the findings of an interview and digital methods-based study of young Australian hospitality workers who lost work in the wake of the pandemic. In so doing it focuses on the relationship between one's present-day material conditions and their capacity to form plans for the future, and the role of planning in young people's future thinking. The article argues that the impact of the pandemic on the participants' plans can be best understood not through analysis of their orientations to planning, but through consideration of the degree to which their present-day circumstances brought them further away from the desired futures that they had been planning. Indeed, some of the participants who found themselves in states of deprivation identified that their plans remained unchanged, while others who were little affected in an immediate, material sense experienced it as a crisis or as a catalyst for re-evaluation. By identifying the relationship between present-day conditions and future plans for our participants, we ultimately contend that understanding planning as a form of practice through which one's present is connected to their desired future allows for insight into how young people prioritise and address goals in various spheres of life. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)

The impact of pandemic-related loss of work on young adults’ plans

This article presents the findings of an interview and digital methods-based study of young Australian hospitality workers who lost work in the wake of the pandemic. In so doing it focuses on the relationship between one's present-day material conditions and their capacity to form plans for the future, and the role of planning in young people's future thinking. The article argues that the impact of the pandemic on the participants' plans can be best understood not through analysis of their orientations to planning, but through consideration of the degree to which their present-day circumstances brought them further away from the desired futures that they had been planning. Indeed, some of the participants who found themselves in states of deprivation identified that their plans remained unchanged, while others who were little affected in an immediate, material sense experienced it as a crisis or as a catalyst for re-evaluation. By identifying the relationship between present-day conditions and future plans for our participants, we ultimately contend that understanding planning as a form of practice through which one's present is connected to their desired future allows for insight into how young people prioritise and address goals in various spheres of life.

Should I stay or should I go? The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on regional, rural and remote undergraduate students at an Australian University

While widening participation in higher education for regional, rural and remote (RRR) Australian communities has been a major policy focus in recent years, the pandemic and resulting lockdowns and closures of internal borders between Australian states and territories has impacted significantly upon RRR students who relocate to pursue tertiary education. In this article we draw on intersectional theory and in-depth interview data to understand the experiences, challenges faced by, and related choice-making processes of students during the height of the pandemic period. In the wake of the lockdown and implementation of a study from home university policy, the 27 students interviewed uncovered a new variation of the classic dilemma faced by young people living in rural areas: should I stay or should I go? Drawing on existing insights about student choice in higher education, we analyse mobility decision-making in relation to the participants’ classed, gendered and locational identities. We find that although the pandemic impacted upon all of the participants, their experiences differed significantly and were stratified across existing lines of inequalities related particularly to their access to financial resources and practical assistance. We ultimately contend that while the pandemic and resulting public health measures provide an extraordinary context, they nevertheless highlight some of the key challenges and vulnerabilities faced by RRR students who are unable to quickly marshal financial, emotional and practical support when crises occur, providing insights whose utility persists beyond the pandemic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of Educational Review is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Youth, Precarious Work and the Pandemic

While Australia has experienced low COVID-19 case numbers relative to other countries, it has witnessed severe economic consequences in the wake of the pandemic. The hospitality industry, in which young adults are overrepresented, has been among the most affected industries. In this article, we present findings from an interview and a digital methods-based study of young hospitality workers in the Australian cities of Melbourne and Newcastle who lost shifts or employment due to the pandemic. We argue that the participants? ability to cope with the loss of work was mediated by the degree of family support that they could access, with some experiencing the pandemic as an inconvenience, while others suffered extreme financial hardship. Findings from this study show that the most severe impacts of the pandemic play out along pre-existing lines of inequality and marginality, causing the most severe consequences for those who were already most vulnerable to them.

Intersecting marginalities: International students’ struggles for ‘survival’ in COVID-19

AbstractThis article draws on examples from a study of the impacts of COVID-19 shutdowns on young hospitality workers in Melbourne and Newcastle, Australia, in May and June of 2020. We explore how existing vulnerabilities related to gender, migrant status and precarious hospitality work were intensified by the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic for young women international students in our study. The international students we discuss were exposed to extreme financial precarity, which rendered them vulnerable to other gendered forms of risk and exploitation, including taking part in experimental drug trails and having to take off-the-books cleaning work for a ?creep?. These students described feeling ?unwelcome? or ?unwanted? through open racial discrimination, or comments from the Prime Minister that international students should ?go home?. We take an embodied intersectional approach to detail how existing conditions of marginality such as gender, migrant status, economic vulnerability, and precarious conditions of hospitality labour are compounded in the pandemic and exacerbate inequalities, manifesting in increased threats to physical safety and wellbeing.This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.