Abstract
In 2017, Life Patterns participants in both cohorts were asked to nominate the most important issues facing Australia. Their responses, which reveal the complex nature of generations, both reflect and transcend generation and life-stage. Both cohorts reveal deep concerns about the environment; cohort 1 ranked the next most important issues for Australia as being the cost of living, security and terrorism, the economy, and education. Cohort 2 ranked the next most important issues facing Australia as the lack of jobs and job insecurity, drug abuse, and housing affordability. This chapter discusses the background to these responses, placing them into the context of increasing economic precarity and the increasing challenge posed by climate change. These responses by Life Patterns participants reveal strongly-felt and deep-seated concerns about Australia and a shared future, providing a counterpoint to the popular conception of generations X and Y as highly individualised and inward-focussed. Their shared concerns about the environment are suggestive of commonalities that span rather than divide the generations. These shared concerns, as well as the more specific cohort-based issues reveal a common lack of trust in governments to address these basic life concerns on behalf of their generation and those that follow. While revealing commonalities across the generations, this chapter also suggests that the economic insecurity that characterises the new adulthood is mirrored by the ontological insecurity posed by climate change and the failure of governments to act.
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Chesters, J., Cuervo, H., Cook, J., Wyn, J. (2020). Generations, Issues and Priorities. In: Wyn, J., Cahill, H., Woodman, D., Cuervo, H., Leccardi, C., Chesters, J. (eds) Youth and the New Adulthood. Perspectives on Children and Young People, vol 8. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-3365-5_9
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