Values,identities and social constructions of the European Union among Turkish university youth

The present study aimed to investigate Turkish university youth's constructions concerning the European Union (EU) and their reactions to the EU's December 2002 Copenhagen summit decision to delay discussion of Turkey's entry to the EU. Specifically it aimed to show that socio‐political identities among Turkish youth were related to historical developments in Turkey's past and that these identities had associations with values of ethnocentricism, patriotism, and secularism. Furthermore it was predicted that constructions of the EU reactions to the decision would be related. Students (400) from five universities at the three largest cities of Turkey participated in the study. Three identities, Nationalist‐Islam, Kemalist, and Western; three constructions of the EU, Europe as Different, Impermeable Boundaries, and Different but Advantageous, and two perceived causes for the decision, Differences‐Conflict and Justification emerged from factor analyses. Second order factor analysis revealed that Nationalist‐Islam identity and authoritarian, ethnocentric and antisecular values formed a cluster whereas Kemalist and Western identities were grouped with low levels of patriotism. Positive and negative constructions of the EU and reactions to the Copenhagen decision were also grouped under two separate factors. Further analyses revealed that an index of urbanization composed of parental education and rural‐urban origin predicted the Authoritarian‐Nationalistic cluster and that this value‐identity cluster predicted positive and negative views of the EU. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Identification as a Focal Point in Couple Therapy

It is impossible to speak meaningfully about a couple's relationship without giving full consideration to the way the partners' childhood experiences have influenced their identities. Each partner is affected by his or her relationships with both parents and by intimacy beliefs shaped through observations of the parents' marriage. Often, unconscious identifications underlie the interactions that lead distressed couples to seek therapy. This paper explores two concepts that can assist therapists in repairing the present in the context of the past—projective identification and disidentification. Consideration is given to the power of the parents' marriage and to identifications based on individual parents.     

(Dis)comfort in the city: How young travellers in London negotiate mobility within the city

Conflicting claims are made about the extent to which Travellers in Britain remain outsiders in urban society (McGarry 2017; Sibley 1981). This paper sheds light on this question by addressing a neglected aspect of Traveller mobility, namely the day-to-day traversing of urban spaces beyond their (typically segregated) trailer sites. Focusing on public transport, it draws on eighteen months of ethnographic research with young people from Traveller backgrounds from a London-based youth group to understand the nature of the encounters they have as they go out and about in the city. The paper is interested in the place of affect in these encounters, and more generally, affect's role in shaping – or failing to shape – young Travellers' behaviour. The paper considers discomfort experienced through the mobility of young Travellers; it argues that young Travellers are encouraged by their elders to discipline and regulate emotional responses in encounters with non-Travellers and that this constitutes evidence of their continuing outsider status.     

FORCES OF TOMORROW

This article examines the social experience of belonging to the British section of the international Socialist Zionist youth movement, Hashomer Hatzair. The study is based on interviews conducted with 10 former activists across four generations and focuses primarily on the movement in London. It will be argued that Hashomer Hatzair represented a unique alternative youth culture based on a model developed by the movement's founders in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. This model synthesized Robert Baden-Powell's Scouting, the Jugendkultur of the German youth movements, Socialist Zionism and Marxism. Imported to Britain by young German and Austrian refugees from Nazism, this youth culture was reproduced initially in the English countryside, and after the war plugged into the pre-existing politics of Jewish radicalism in London and the general Zionist fervour that anticipated the establishment of Israel. Hashomer Hatzair emphasized autonomy from adult society. By creating autonomous youth spaces, the movement opened a portal for young Jews to shape their own identities. Through a process of politicization and education, the movement's adherents would identify life on Israeli kibbutzim as an ideal future in adulthood. In tandem with the projection of heroic Jewish role models, this process encouraged Hashomer Hatzair's followers to define their Jewishness in secular and existential terms, in opposition both to contemporary consumerist and urbanized capitalism, and to the traditional communal associations of the past.     

Negotiating faith on the Coventry Road: British-Muslim youth identities in the ‘third space’

This article, which arises from three years of ethnographic fieldwork, explores the negotiation of faith, place and social identity amongst British-Muslim youth in one inner-city community in Birmingham, UK. Narratives drawn from fieldwork are brought into a critical dialogue with theoretical discourse about the nature of culture, the built urban environment, youth identities and contextualised religious discourse within the British-Muslim community. The article suggests that a dynamic definition of culture as an open and ongoing process of meaning-making and the utilisation of ‘third space’ thinking are needed to adequately explore the multifaceted contextual religious discourse of British-Muslim youth. The article seeks to answer a key question: how do urban British-Muslim youth negotiate faith and meaning in a society that increasingly questions their presence and what might their experience have to teach wider society about the impact that contemporary urbanism has on the articulation of personal, political and religious identity?     

Queer Youth in Family Therapy

Trends in popular belief about same‐sex relationships have undergone noteworthy change in the United States over the last decade. Yet this change has been marked by stark polarizations and has occurred at varying rates depending upon regional, community, racial, religious, and individual family context. For queer youth and their families, this cultural transformation has broadened opportunities and created a new set of risks and vulnerabilities. At the same time, youth's increasingly open and playful gender fluidity and sexual identity is complicated by unique intersections of class, race, religion, and immigration. Effective family therapy with queer youth requires practitioner's and treatment models that are sensitive to those who bear the burden of multiple oppressions and the hidden resilience embedded in their layered identities. We present case examples of our model of family therapy which addresses refuge, supports difficult dialogs, and nurtures queerness by looking for hidden resilience in the unique intersections of queer youths' lives. These intersections provide transformational potential for youth, their families and even for family therapists as we are all nurtured and challenged to think more complexly about intersectionality, sexuality, and gender.     

Expanding Academic and Career Self‐Efficacy: A Family Systems Framework

This article presents 2 theories useful to school counselors: self‐efficacy and family systems. The author advocates the use of a family‐sensitive model when counseling individuals that recognizes and respects the individual's membership in a family culture. Self‐efficacy and family systems interventions for academic and career development are demonstrated in the hope that individual identities in relation to family identities will be strengthened so that youth can access family legacies as they consider their academic and career options.     

Editorial: Intergenerational encounters,intersubjective age relations

This special issue introduces a conceptual framework of intergenerational relationality, with the purpose of drawing attention to the question, what exceeds an age's categorical features. In recent interdisciplinary scholarship, wide and diverse range of identities and experiences within different categories of age have been explored. In childhood studies, understandings of children and youth as subjects in their own rights have pushed past a reliance on their existence via their fundamental difference from adults. Another robust literature discusses the ways that categorical power relations embolden adults to exert control onto youth, and the purposes and effects of power relations on the adult and child binary. Despite the sustained and vital arguments foregrounding children and young people's agencies and subjective experiences, these debates have done little to theorize age. In our view, age often remains legible through the same categories that the research started with. That is, by focusing on distinctions, scholarship often renaturalizes age by assuming it as such. As one result, the naturalized position of adults as “non-aged beings” is maintained and reconstructed. To take the study of relational age a step further, this special issue sets out to deflate categorical assumptions of age, and instead proposes that increasing attention is paid to intergenerational encounters and intersubjective age relations.     

The Mystery Revealed—Intersectionality in the Black Box: An Analysis of Female Migrants' Employment Opportunities in Urban China

Female migrant workers are doubly disadvantaged in China's urban labor market because of their doubly marginalized identities as both women and rural residents. This article takes a process‐centered approach to explore how female migrants' two identity categories generate intersectional effects on their job‐search experiences in cities. Data from in‐depth interviews conducted in Xi'an city, China, in 2010 and 2011 reveal that three patterns of relationship explain the processes where the gender–hukou (residence status) intersection affects female migrants. In the first pattern, a splintering relationship, hukou and gender work singly to form employment discrimination against female migrants. The second, a contesting relationship, indicates that hukou and gender alternate as the primary identities that affect their employment opportunities. In the third, a collaborating relationship, hukou and gender work together to either positively or negatively shape female migrants' employment prospects. No matter which of the relationships plays out, female migrants' disadvantages as cheap urban laborers have become deeply entrenched in the urban labor market. This can be explained by two powerful social institutions in contemporary China, the hukou system and patriarchy.     

Comparative identity and evaluation of socio-political change: Perceptions of the European Community as a function of the salience of regional identities

Using questionnaire data concerning perceptions of the European Community (EC) in Scotland and Andalucia we explored how the EC is perceived, and a European identification adopted as a function of the salience of these ‘regional’ identities. Drawing on the work concerning the concept of ‘comparative identity’ (Ros, Cano & Huici, 1987) it is argued that disidentification with the ‘nation-state’ (i.e. Britain and Spain respectively) is a useful way of measuring the salience of such regional identities in the self/concept. We predicted that such identities would be more salient in Scotland than in Andalucia and that in Scotland the salience of subjects' regional identities would be associated with beliefs concerning the need for strategies of regional empowerment in its relation to the nation (Britain). We further predicted that the EC would be judged as a function of this comparative identity so that in Scotland (but not in Andalucia), a European identification would be associated with what may be called ‘social change’ beliefs (e.g. beliefs concerning the need for changing aspects of the region's relationship with the nation). Supportive evidence is found for all these predictions. However, no support was found for our prediction of a correlation between the Scots' regional identification and their European identification. The paper concludes with a discussion of the utility of the concept of comparative identity. © 1997 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Not Simply in the Eye of the Beholder: Authenticity as a Product of Candidate Preference and Unfettered Speech

Authenticity has emerged over recent decades as a prominent theme in both the press and in political research—and peaked in the 2016 presidential contest that pitted Donald Trump against Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, Marco Rubio, and Ted Cruz. In this context, we attempted to answer the question: How do voters judge a presidential candidate's authenticity? Here we use motivated reasoning and correspondent inference theory as theoretical frameworks to examine how partisan preference combines with perceptions of unfettered speech and strategic impression management to influence voter judgments of a candidate's authenticity. An online survey of 525 respondents demonstrated that individuals' partisan preferences influenced both judgments of a candidate's authenticity and their perceptions of behaviors signifying authenticity (use of unfettered speech versus strategic impression management). These behavioral signals partially mediated the relation between candidate preferences and authenticity judgments. Moreover, voters, given their partisan preferences, differentially weighted candidates' use of unfettered speech and strategic impression management tactics in their judgments of authenticity. Finally, unfiltered/politically incorrect speech was found to have both positive and negative effects on authenticity judgments. Findings further elucidate the nature of authenticity as perceived in others and identify intermediary variables and boundary conditions that influence those perceptions.     

Supporting families of transgender children/youth: Parents speak on their experiences,identity, and views

ABSTRACT

Background: Transgender children/youth demonstrate the best possibility for resilience and positive mental health when they are part of an affirming and supportive family. To optimize families in supporting transgender children/youth, parents/caregivers need to be supported. Transgender children/youth and their families regularly navigate a myriad of challenges through society.

Aims: Within the extant literature on transgender children and youth, relatively little attention is focused on the experiences of parents/caregivers and how their close family relationships are affected. The present qualitative study addresses this gap in knowledge through its exploration of the experiences, identities, and views of parents/caregivers of transgender children/youth.

Method: The study is longitudinal and this article represents the first wave. Fourteen parents of 12 transgender children/youth, aged 6–17, participated in in-depth semistructured interviews. Participants were recruited via social media and at an on-site conference for transgender youth and their families. All children/youth had socially transitioned. Those who were eligible for puberty suppression and/or hormone therapy were receiving those. The interviews were inductively coded for themes by two coders using the constant comparative method.

Results: Participants' reports on their experiences yielded three themes: (1) transgender issues as the family's focus; (2) proactivity, child-focused: preemptive actions to prevent adverse consequences; and (3) self-care. These themes included subthemes on effective coping strategies to mitigate struggles. Three themes related to participants' identity and views emerged: (1) identity reformation, (2) self-evaluation, and (3) views of future. These themes included subthemes that reflected how participants viewed themselves, their child, and the future.

Discussion: A transgender identity in one family member affects all household members. Parents/guardians may experience guilt and self-doubt over decisions. Factors that may improve outcomes with extended family and schools include families' preemptive dissemination of information on transgender identities and explicating expectations of respect and nonintrusion. Ingrained traditions may force life-altering decisions.     

Can children develop a dual identity when immigrant mothers feel homesick? A short-term longitudinal study among Turkish immigrants

Abstract

Turkish immigrant-origin youth in Western Europe often develop strong ethnic and weaker national identities. To advance our understanding of this pattern, we investigated the concurrent development and intergenerational transmission of both identities over time in conjunction with maternal homesickness. Our study was based on a sample of 176 Turkish mother-child dyads from Germany, Norway, and the Netherlands. Mothers (M _t1 = 38 years) reported on their identities and homesickness at T1 and children (M _t1 = 12 years) on their identities at T1 and T2. Our results showed that children’s ethnic and national identities became more incompatible over time, mother’s homesickness strengthened children’s ethnic identities, and mother’s ethnic identities in combination with high levels of homesickness weakened children’s national identities. We conclude that early adolescence is a critical time for Turkish immigrant youth’s identity development and that a focus on parental acculturative stressors can advance ethnic socialization and cultural transmission research.     

Embodied performance in violent places: Transiting in and through the home,the streets,and institutions

Young marginalized people who live in violent contexts have intense and non-linear spatial experiences. This paper explores their gendered responses to violence in terms of body performance and spatial movements between their houses, in the streets and within various institutions. We consider these social subjects to be both ‘body-subjects' and ‘feeling-subjects', as their corporeality articulates urban space and becomes an extension of locations bound by emotion. Through mapping workshops, drawings, and interviews with young residents of a rehabilitation center located on the edge of Mexico City, we explore how institutions dedicated to marginalized youths materialize in their life trajectories. In other words, this paper analyzes institutions from the perspective of youth experience and feelings rather than institutional programs or from the point of view of staff members. We locate these institutions in the various spaces inhabited by the youth. The paper concludes with a reflection on the ambiguities of “care” as a response to violence.     

The black male urban barbershop as a sex-role socialization setting

Two hundred-eighty participants-as-observer hours and eight hours of informal interviewers with “informants” during a two-month period in summer 1983 were data sources in an analysis of a Black male urban barbershop in a midwestern city. The study focused on the barbershop as a sex-role socialization setting in which adult Black males actively negotiate masculinity while Black male youth passively negotiate masculinity and in all likelihood are socialized to become active negotiators. Content analyses of taped barbershop sessions and the researcher's written reports of the session revealed that the barbershop studied perpetuates sex-role stereotypes, encourages sexist attitudes toward women, and, in general, is a sex-role socialization setting that promotes sex-role inequality.     

Urban American Indian Community Perspectives on Resources and Challenges for Youth Suicide Prevention

American Indian (AI) youth have some of the highest rates of suicide of any group in the United States, and the majority of AI youth live in urban areas away from tribal communities. As such, understanding the resources available for suicide prevention among urban AI youth is critical, as is understanding the challenges involved in accessing such resources. Pre‐existing interview data from 15 self‐identified AI community members and staff from an Urban Indian Health Organization were examined to understand existing resources for urban AI youth suicide prevention, as well as related challenges. A thematic analysis was undertaken, resulting in three principal themes around suicide prevention: formal resources, informal resources, and community values and beliefs. Formal resources that meet the needs of AI youth were viewed as largely inaccessible or nonexistent, and youth were seen as more likely to seek help from informal sources. Community values of mutual support were thought to reinforce available informal supports. However, challenges arose in terms of the community's knowledge of and views on discussing suicide, as well as the perceived fit between community values and beliefs and formal prevention models.     

Perceiving couples as discrete units: The existence of couple-level identities

The present studies examined the often-implicit notion that people think about couples as discrete entities, distinct from the individuals therein—a concept we refer to as couple-level identities. Findings suggest that people perceive both their own and other couples as distinct units (Study 1) that can possess dyadic qualities unique from those of either couple member. Exploring the implications of these identities, Studies 2 and 3 examined how couple-level identities (beyond the identities of the individuals) influence social judgment (e.g., cognitive biases). Finally, Study 4's findings suggest that perceptions of discrete couple-level identities are natural parts of everyday social cognition. Together, results suggest the need to consider couple-level identities in research on the self, social perception, and close relationships.     

Distancing and Solidarity as Resistance to Sexual Objectification in a Nude Dancing Bar

ABSTRACT

Drawing on observation and interviews in a mid-Atlantic nude dancing bar, I examine front-stage customer-dancer relations as well as dancers' discourse among themselves backstage. I use James Scott's theoretical framework regarding subordinate group resistance strategies to analyze dancers' attempts to resist customers' harassment. On the micro-level dancers exercise agency, reconstructing their identities within the larger context of macro-level oppression. Dancers' front stage tactics include spatial distancing, verbal one-liners, physical aggression, calling on customers, and united action with other dancers. Backstage, dancers reframe the public text, articulating their own identity construction by creating a social site for solidarity and desexualizing the body.     

Participatory planning and children's emotional labor in the production of urban nature

Children have increasingly been called upon to participate in the planning of their communities, especially in projects associated with urban nature and outdoor play spaces. Building upon the concept of emotional labor, we critically explore how children become enrolled in such initiatives. Specifically, we focus on the emotional geographies underlining children's participation, including the emotions children exhibit invest, experience and produce in these projects, as well as the ways these emotions are regulated, framed and used by urban managers and policy-makers in participatory planning activities. Our theoretical framework intersects research on emotional labor with recent geographic literature on children, urban governance, and emotions. We explore the idea of children's and young people's emotional labor through an analysis of a collaborative effort between local nonprofits, government agencies, youth organizations and research institutions aimed at addressing the lack of public green space in a disenfranchised urban community in California. The empirical evidence is drawn from a research project in which we engaged a group of 9–11 year old children in a variety of planning activities involving participatory mapping, use of visual media, and focus groups.     

Toward an Ethical Reflective Practice of a Theory in the Flesh: Embodied Subjectivities in a Youth Participatory Action Research Mural Project

The focus of this paper is to demonstrate how embodied subjectivities shape research experiences. Through an autoethnography of my involvement in a Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) after‐school program with low‐income and working‐class youth of Color from predominantly Latinx communities I examined my embodied subjectivities, via an ethical reflective practice, as these surfaced in the research context. Autoethnography is presented as a tool to facilitate an ethical reflective practice that aligns with heart‐centered work. Drawing from an epistemology of a theory in the flesh (Anzaldúa & Moraga, 1981), embodied subjectivities are defined by the lived experiences felt and expressed through the body, identities, and positionalities of the researcher. The article concludes with implications for the development of community psychology competencies that attend to the researcher's embodied subjectivities.