Doing youth in time? A relational perspective on the temporal constructions of youth

Bibliographic Data

ID4356017
AuthorsAndreas Walther (0000-0001-6999-3862, Institute of Social Pedagogy and Adult Education, Goethe-University Frankfurt am Main, Frankfurt am Main, Germany), Barbara Stauber (0009-0000-3004-060X, University of Tübingen)
Year2025
Volume34
Issue3
Pages312-333
Publication date2025-08-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueTime & Society (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0961-463X • E-ISSN: 1461-7463
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/0961463x241264333
OpenAlexW4400901541
LanguageEN
Citations received5
References cited40

Temporality is a key principle of the constitution of youth as a life phase. Historically, ,invented' and institutionalized as moratorium, youth has been reserved for preparation for adulthood, thus contributing to the sequential order of the modern life course. Institutional age marks in school, youth welfare or citizenship claim to explicitly demarcate beginning and ending of youth in a linear way. Not only but most lately in the context of the activating welfare state, temporal normativities and normalities of growing up seem to have lost consistency. Consequently, young people have to position themselves with regard to chrononormative markers of the 'right age' reflected by distinctions from, 'too young for ...' or, 'too old for ...'. The article analyses blurring temporalities of the youth phase by relating changes of the temporal regime(s) of young people's growing up and their individual and collective time work from a doing transitions perspective. The complexity and paradox of these temporalities are illustrated by three exemplary empirical case vignettes: Coping with suspended transitions in the pandemic; Fridays for Future as intergenerational struggle for future; and youth cultural practices expressing attempts of slowing down. In these constellations tensions of temporality emerge: the tension between moratorium and acceleration, between orientation towards the future and orientation towards the present, between simultaneity and linear sequentiality. A relational approach to the temporalities of youth is developed along with concepts like relative time and asynchronicity while young people's time work is reinterpreted in terms of doing youth in time. The paper concludes by discussing the implications of relational temporality for conceptualizing young people's agency and consequences for youth research

Developmental psychology · Epistemology · Perspective (graphical · Positive Youth Development · Sociology · Time perspective · Computer Science · Identity, Memory, and Therapy · Psychological and Temporal Perspectives Research · Psychology · Social Psychology · Youth Education and Societal Dynamics · Artificial Intelligence