Johanna Wyn’s research while affiliated with University of Melbourne and other places

Youth and young adulthood, as life stages, have an affinity with longitudinal research methods. The idea of these stages of life is often captured through metaphors of transition, and related to dynamic processes of change more broadly (see Cuervo and Wyn in J Youth Stud 17(7):901–915, 2014; Cuzzocrea in J Youth Stud 23(1):61–75, 2020). A growing body of literature on conducting research has emerged, and this work expands on many dimensions of quantitative, qualitative and mixed methods approaches to youth longitudinal research. However, this work tend to be situated firmly within a specific study, or to be primarily instructional. As a result, there is little writing on the practice of longitudinal youth research that spans the breadth of methodological approaches (quantitative, qualitative and mixed methods) as well as a range of studies (although see Neale’s (The craft of qualitative longitudinal research. Sage, 2021) excellent volume of qualitative longitudinal methods). It is the aim of this volume to address this area of relative silence. Specifically, we seek to draw together and showcase longitudinal youth research programs across the spectrum of approaches and the research tools they employ. In this chapter we provide reflections on the value and future of longitudinal youth research.

This chapter traces the evolution of longitudinal youth research design and practice, drawing on insights from Australia and the UK since the 1940s. Reflecting societal anxieties about the role of young people during times of social change, longitudinal youth research was originally dominated by large-scale, survey-based studies the design of which was modelled on medical research. Access to survey-based longitudinal youth research was enhanced in the 1960s by the development of computer technology, enabling the analysis of complex data. Interest in longitudinal youth research was given impetus in the late 1970s and early 1980s by concerns about youth transitions, as youth labour markets began to collapse, and post-compulsory educational participation expanded. This period also saw the emergence of qualitative longitudinal youth research programs which have contributed to research in which qualitative and quantitative tools and analysis are designed to be complementary. Drawing on a range of examples, the chapter argues that the strengths of longitudinal youth research are in its capacity to inform policy and to contribute to the development of new conceptual landscapes. The chapter concludes with a discussion of key methodological, ethical and political challenges for longitudinal youth research.

This chapter concludes the section Insights from youth longitudinal research, highlighting some key points made by the three chapters presented there. Each draws on a research program that spans the life journeys of young people from the 1990s to the 2000s, presenting findings from the Life Patterns longitudinal research program in Australia (Maire and Chesters); the Life Paths of a Generation study in Estonia (Saar, Nimmerfeldt and Kazjulja); and the Grammars of Youth research program in Argentina (Miranda and Arancibia). Life Patterns is a mixed-method longitudinal multi-cohort research program that documents the lives of three cohorts of Australians who left secondary school in 1991, 2005–6 and 2023–4. Life Paths of a Generation, which tracks the trajectories of young Estonians who left secondary school in 1983, also employs both survey and interview tools to develop insights into the significance of the social, political and economic transformations in Estonia that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Similarly, the Grammars of youth research program in Argentina, initiated in the late 1990s, tracks the trajectories of high school graduates after the implementation of neoliberal economic policies through surveys, and subsequently through interviews with a sub-sample.

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.

This chapter sets out the project of this book, which is to provide a critical analysis of the work that the concept of belonging does in youth studies. Belonging has emerged as a recurring theme in youth studies, yet it is largely taken for granted and often under-theorised. The ‘turn’ to belonging is reflected in research that captures the nuances of young people’s experiences at a local level, while also accounting for the global and institutional processes and structures that shape young people’s lives. Belonging has become a common framework used to recognise the challenges and opportunities of social, economic, technological and environmental change. This chapter offers an approach for evaluating the benefits and shortcomings of a belonging agenda in youth studies.