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The purpose of this study is to illustrate, analyze and discuss how a group of Swedish-born adolescents of non-Swedish descent identify themselves in relation to personal experiences of belonging and loyalty. I have chosen a qualitative research methodology in the form of one group interview and two individual interviews. The result of the study shows that the group of Swedish-born adolescents of non-Swedish descent identify themselvs with one or more nation-states in different ways depending on different concept metaphors that underlie the concept of nation in different national discourses.

Thesis (D. Min.)--Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, 1994. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 135-149).

Thesis (D. Min.)--Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2001. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 150-151).

Thesis (D. Min.)--Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, 1994. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 135-149).

This thesis is an examination of the prominent discourse which claims young people are apathetic and disengaged from politics. It is argued that this discourse is based upon two faulty conceptual assumptions, firstly, that youth is a period of linear transition to adulthood, and secondly, that the discourse unreflexively applies an unproblematised notion of politics which has its origin in the eighteenth century Scottish Enlightenment. The research used in-depth qualitative interviews to explore the ways in which young people operating across the political spectrum understand and practice politics. These qualitative findings add to existing studies of young people and politics, which are predominantly quantitative in approach. The findings suggest that the Scottish Enlightenment’s narrow, regulatory, liberal model of politics is the hegemonic model of politics for participants. However, this hegemony is challenged by participants’ own ‘political’ practices, the collapse of liberalism’s public/private divide under conditions of late modernity, and an interconnected sense of self. Moreover, contrary to the discourse of apathetic and disengaged youth, that there are a number of ways of understanding and practicing politics, particularly in light of social processes – such as individualisation, new social movements, and consumerism – driving recent social change.

This thesis examines the meanings and experiences of citizenship for a particular group of working class young people. By using an ethnographic methodology it identifies the different social processes that influence how they experience citizenship and how they perceive themselves as present and future citizens. Ideas proposed by T.H. Marshall have dominated post war discourses on citizenship, but these have failed to explain what it means to the young working class to be a citizen. The meaning of youth has historically and culturally undergone change. What it means to be young and working class is greatly influenced by factors such as, the cultural context of community life, the structural relationships of production and consumption, and the wider ideological meanings and policies of political movements such as those of the New Right. It is within this context that citizenship in the 1990s, as a way of life for the young working class,needs to be understood. Sites such as community, work, and leisure and consumption remain central to young people's experience of citizenship. It is in these sites where they gain support and status towards moving into the adult world. Yet changes, especially in work and leisure, are making life increasingly difficult for the young. Opportunities to undertake transitions into adulthood are being affected by the lack of opportunities for full employment, the growth of social divisions and increased generational conflict. These can then undermine young people's feelings of responsibility and obligations. Young women's experience and meanings of citizenship differ from those of young men. Expectations of others around sexuality and gender are influential in 'shaping' young women's choices and opportunities. Young working class women are clearly aware of this and attempt to develop strategies within relationships and the job market which help them resist the inevitability of the 'motherhood trap'. Young people's responses to their experiences of citizenship are to reject the system that claims to represent their interests, that of Parliamentary democracy. But this is not to say that the young are non political, as they construct and act upon their own 'political theories' of the world. It may also be the case that if a wider definition of the 'political' is constructed, then certain actions around 'resistance', 'defence' and 'survival' could also be deemed as possible political responses to their experiences of citizenship.

No description available.

No description available.