Young People and Social Inclusion in the Multicultural City:

Three quarters of the world’s children and young people live in large, multi-ethnic cities where issues of conflict and difference inevitably arise in everyday civic life. While much attention has been paid to discord, violence and disengagement on the part of young people, this project investigates the ways young people cultivate cohesion and inclusion to build productive multicultural communities. It explores young people’s intercultural relations in five Australian cities as well as three international sites: Prato, Italy, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and Johannesburg, South Africa.

Investigators: Professor Anita Harris (Deakin University)

Australian Muslim youth challenging extremism through counter-narratives:

A small minority of Muslim Australian youth are attracted to Islamism (Islamic extremism) but most are not. This is a contentious topic and key national security concern. We look at the counter-narratives to extremism produced by Muslim youth themselves; remixing everyday resources of faith, family, friends and popular culture. Using peer researchers, the project design captures the day-to-day informal negotiation of both the Islamist meta-narrative of extremism, and the Muslim moral panic story that influences Australian politics and media. Data is collected both offline and online. The project focuses on negotiation of multiple identities, and creative practices of youth culture.

Investigators: Professor Pam Nilan, Professor Terry Lovat, Dr Julia Coffey (Newcastle University)

Youth Homelessness in Late Modernity:

This project explores the consequences of experiencing homelessness for young people’s identities. Drawing on empirical material gathered in both urban and rural contexts, the project situates young homeless identities within the broader social terrain of contemporary modern societies such as Australia. The project also explores how homelessness is positioned within systems of moral worth that ascribe value to reflexive individualism. Contemporary young people are under pressure to navigate their lives from a position of individual personal responsibility, and this project explores the way that this influences young people’s relationship to themselves and others.

Investigators: Dr David Farrugia (University of Newcastle)

Spaces of Youth: 

Processes of cultural and economic globalisation are reshaping the spaces and places that young people engage with as they build lives. The global mobility of economic capital, and the new connectivities offered by digital communications technologies, are all reshaping young people’s economic opportunities and personal identities in different places. This project is a wide ranging study on the spatial dimensions of the youth period in a global context. It explores the way that space and place operate as concepts in academic and social policy understandings of youth, the global economic inequalities that shape the youth period, the role of place in shaping young people’s personal aspirations, and the significance of mobility and displacement for young people around the world.

Investigators: Dr David Farrugia (University of Newcastle).