Qualified Hope
Young People’s Education and Employment Pathways in Times of Disruption
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 18938232 |
|---|---|
| Authors | C Waite (0000-0002-3631-7291, The University of Melbourne, corresponding author), Ben Lyall (0000-0003-0283-3797, RMIT University), Robert (0000-0003-4000-2257, Monash University) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Volume | 9 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 23-41 |
| Publication date | 2025-06-24 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of Applied Youth Studies (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 2204-9193 • E-ISSN: 2204-9207 |
| Publisher | Springer Science+Business Media (PUBLISHER • DE) |
| DOI | 10.1007/s43151-025-00184-z |
| OpenAlex | W4411577338 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 2 |
| References cited | 41 |
The pandemic and its aftermath have prompted an extended public and academic conversation about young people, with concerns about the increasing uncertainty of youth employment and education trajectories into the near future. Despite the varying policy approaches surrounding the pandemic, a discourse of concern for a “COVID generation”, allegedly characterized by the complete upending of young people’s futures, has been widely popularized. This is seen in media discourses, as well as in health policy reports, to name a few examples. An emergent literature seeking to make sense of young people’s responses and reactions to the impacts of COVID situates young people as resilient: agile short-term planners who are hopeful about the future. The paper explores how young people understand and articulate “qualified hope” in response to the effects of COVID-19 on future education and employment pathways. In this context, hope is a psychosocial resource they draw on to clarify and make sense of new and alternate ways of thinking about futures. The discussion uses focus group data with 90 young people, drawn from a broader multi-method study of young people’s use of, and experience with, careers guidance in Australia. Informed by broader challenges and complexities shaping employment transitions in the COVID aftermath, hopeful accounts contribute to thinking about youth futures in ways that reflect young people’s resourcefulness and adaptability
Career Pathways · Medical education · Political science · Sociology · Employment and Welfare Studies · Medicine · Psychology · Retirement, Disability, and Employment · Youth Education and Societal Dynamics
Advantages of and Considerations for Conducting Online Focus Groups
Youth, Work and the Post-Fordist Self
Doing Focus Groups
Young people and social change
Imagined Futures
Imagining Youth Futures
Understanding youth in the global economic crisis
Youth and the New Adulthood
Making Sense of Intersecting Crises
Youth Attitudes Towards Their Future
Precarious Hope
The impact of pandemic-related loss of work on young adults’ plans
Beyond ‘Neet’ and ‘tidy’ pathways
Hope as a form of agency in the future thinking of disenfranchised young people
Figures of youth
Covid-19 and young people’s ‘Future Presents’
About them, without them? figures of youth in Australian policy 2014–2021
Without hope everything would be doom and gloom’
The Covid-19 pandemic and youth in recent, historical perspective
We are unlikely to return to the same world, and I do not want it to destroy my future.’ Young people's worries through the outbreak of the Covid‐19 pandemic
Imagining the Future in the Neoliberal Era
Youth, Precarious Work and the Pandemic
Covid‐19 and the immediate impact on young people and employment in Australia
Liminality, Covid ‐19 and the long crisis of young adults' employment
Covid-19 and the politics of hope
Young people’s engagement in online research
Keep hoping, keep going
Agency, futurity and representation
The Sociology of Hope
With the Pandemic Everything Changes
| Unique citing works | 2 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 2 |
| Citation span | 2025 - 2025 (1) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 2 |