Abstract
The relationship between place and identity is at the heart of this chapter. The data is drawn from a study of young people who grew up during the time of New Zealand’s neoliberal reforms in the late 1980s and 1990s (Nairn et al. 2012). These young people, who were in transition from school in the mid-2000s, drew on discourses inflected by neoliberalism to craft meaningful narratives of their lives in the context of family, friends, places, education, employment, leisure, and spirituality. The focus here is on four case studies of participants living in a small provincial town who were interviewed for over two (in some cases, three) years. Each one of this group had to consider whether to stay in their town post-school or to leave to pursue tertiary education or employment elsewhere. To many who had just left school, leaving town was perceived as “making it” in the wider world as though mobility and where one lives (or moves to) were physical manifestations of a “successful” transition to adulthood. Those who stayed “behind” were often perceived as unambitious. But this dualism belies the complex ways in which the relationship of these young people to their town developed during their immediate post-school years. Many left, but not all. Some stayed in spite of their desire to leave, others stayed because they could not imagine living anywhere else, while others left but returned after a year or so away. The chapter explores the intersections between place, biography, and wider social changes wrought by neoliberal policies, particularly those promoting higher education as the next step after high school.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Archer, L., & Yamashita, H. (2003). Knowing their limits? Identities, inequalities and inner city school leavers’ post-16 aspirations. Journal of Education Policy, 18(1), 53–69.
Archer, L., Hutchings, M., & Ross, A. (2000). Higher education and social class: Issues of exclusion and inclusion. London: Routledge Falmer.
Atwool, N. (1999). New Zealand children in the 1990s: Beneficiaries of new right economic policy? Children and Society, 13, 380–393.
Ball, S., Macrae, S., & Maguire, M. (1999). Young lives, diverse choices and imagined futures in an education and training market. International Journal of Inclusive Education, 3(3), 195–224.
Ball, S., Maguire, M., & Macrae, S. (2000). Choice, pathways and transitions post-16: New youth, new economies in the global city. London: Routledge, Falmer.
Ball, S., Reay, D., & David, M. (2002). “Ethnic choosing”: Minority ethnic students, social class and higher education choice. Race, Ethnicity and Education, 5(4), 333–357.
Borell, B. (2005). Living in the city ain’t so bad: Cultural identity for young Māori in South Auckland. In J. Liu, T. McCreanor, T. McIntosh, & T. Teaiwa (Eds.), New Zealand identities: Departures and destinations (pp. 191–206). Wellington: Victoria University Press.
Bottrell, D. (2007). Resistance, resilience and social identities: Reframing “problem youth” and the problem of schooling. Journal of Youth Studies, 10(5), 597–616.
Brown, P., & Hesketh, A. (2004). The mismanagement of talent: Employability and jobs in the knowledge economy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Brown, P., Lauder, H., & Ashton, D. (2010). The global auction. The broken promises of education, jobs, and incomes. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Campbell, H. (2006). Real men, real locals and real workers: Realising masculinity in small town New Zealand. In H. Campbell, M. Mayerfeld Bell, & M. Finney (Eds.), Country boys: Masculinity and rural life (pp. 87–104). University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press.
Campbell, H., Law, R., & Honeyfield, J. (1999). ‘What it means to be a man’: Hegemonic masculinity and the reinvention of beer. In R. Law, H. Campbell, & J. Dolan (Eds.), Masculinities in Aotearoa/New Zealand (pp. 166–186). Palmerston North: Dunmore Press.
Dalziel, P., & Lattimore, R. (2004). The New Zealand macroeconomy: Striving for sustainable growth with equity (5th ed.). Melbourne: Oxford University Press.
Davies, B., & Banks, C. (1992). The gender trap: A feminist post-structuralist analysis of primary school children’s talk about gender. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 24(1), 1–25.
Dwyer, P., Smith, G., Tyler, D., & Wyn, J. (2005). Immigrants in time: Life patterns 2004 (Research Report No. 27). Australian Youth Research Centre, University of Melbourne.
EGRIS: European Group for Integrated Social Research. (2001). Misleading trajectories: Transition dilemmas of young adults in Europe. Journal of Youth Studies, 4(1), 101–118.
Frankenberg, R. (1993). White women, race matters: The social construction of whiteness. London: Routledge.
Hall, T., Coffey, A., & Lashua, B. (2009). Steps and stages: Rethinking transitions in youth and place. Journal of Youth Studies, 12(5), 547–561.
Higgins, J., & Alfeld, J. (2006). Youth labour markets in post-1984 New Zealand: Young people negotiating school-to-work transitions. In Proceedings of the 12th conference of labour, employment and Work in New Zealand (pp. 362–368). Wellington: Victoria University.
Higgins, J., & Nairn, K. (2006). In transition: Choice and the children of New Zealand’s economic reforms. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 27(2), 207–220.
Higgins, J., Vaughan, K., Phillips, H., & Dalziel, P. (2008). Education employment linkages: International literature review (Research Report No. 2). Research Programme on Education Employment Linkages (EEL). Agribusiness & Economics Research Unit (AERU), Lincoln University, NZ. Retrieved from www.eel.org.nz
Higgins, J., Nairn, K., & Sligo, J. (2009). Alternative ways of expressing and reading identity. Ethnography and Education, 4(1), 83–99.
Higgins, J., Nairn, K., & Sligo, J. (2010). Vocational imagination and labour market literacy: Young New Zealanders making education–employment linkages. Journal of Vocational Education & Training, 62(1), 13–25.
Holloway, S., & Valentine, G. (2000). Corked hats and Coronation Street: British and New Zealand children’s imaginative geographies of the other. Childhood, 7, 335–357.
Hollway, W., & Jefferson, T. (2000). Doing qualitative research differently: Free association, narrative and the interview method. London: Sage.
Kelsey, J. (1995). The New Zealand experiment: A world model for structural adjustment? Auckland: Auckland University Press with Bridget Williams Books.
Kenway, J., Kraack, A., & Hickey-Moody, A. (2006). Masculinity beyond the metropolis. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Lauder, H., Hughes, D., Watson, S., Waslander, S., Thrupp, M., Strathdee, R., et al. (1999). Trading in futures: Why markets in education don’t work. Buckingham: Open University Press.
McDowell, L. (2002). Transitions to work: Masculine identities, youth inequality and labour market change. Gender, Place and Culture, 9(1), 39–59.
Nairn, K. (2005). The problems of utilising ‘direct experience’ in geography education. Journal of Geography in Higher Education, 29(2), 293–309.
Nairn, K., Panelli, R., & McCormack, J. (2003). Destabilising dualisms: Young people’s experiences of rural and urban environments. Childhood, 10(1), 9–42.
Nairn, K., Higgins, J., & Sligo, J. (2012). Children of Rogernomics: A neoliberal generation leaves school. Dunedin: Otago University Press.
Nelson, H. (2001). Damaged identities, narrative repair. Ithaca/London: Cornell University Press.
Ormond, A. (2001). Voice of Māori youth: The other side of silence. The International Journal of Critical Psychology, 4, 49–60.
Philo, C. (2000). The corner-stones of my world. Childhood, 7(3), 243–256.
Pink, S. (2001). Doing visual ethnography. London: Sage.
Raffe, D. (2003). Pathways linking education and work: A review of concepts, research and policy debates. Journal of Youth Studies, 6(1), 3–19.
Reay, D., Davies, J., David, M., & Ball, S. (2001). Choices of degree or degrees of choice? Class, ‘race’ and the higher education choice process. Sociology, 35(4), 855–874.
Rose, G. (2001). Visual methodologies. London: Sage.
Said, E. (1978). Orientalism. London: Routledge.
Smith, L., Smith, G., Boler, M., Kempton, M., Ormond, A., Ho-Chia, C., & Waetford, R. (2002). ‘Do you guys hate Aucklanders too?’ Youth: Voicing difference from the rural heartland. Journal of Rural Studies, 18, 169–178.
Somers, M. (1994). The narrative constitution of identity: A relational and network approach. Theory and Society, 23, 605–649.
Stokes, H., & Wyn, J. (2007). Constructing identities and making careers: Young people’s perspectives on work and learning. International Journal of Lifelong Education, 26(5), 495–511.
Valentine, G. (2000). Exploring children and young people’s narratives of identity. Geoforum, 31, 257–267.
Vanderbeck, R., & Dunkley, C. (2003). Young people’s narratives of rural–urban difference. Children’s Geographies, 1(2), 241–259.
Walkerdine, V., & Bansel, P. (2010). Neoliberalism, work and subjectivity: Towards a more complex account. In M. Wetherell & C. Mohanty (Eds.), The Sage handbook of identities (pp. 492–507). London: Sage.
Wall, M. (2000). The popular and geography: Music and racialized identities in Aotearoa/New Zealand. In I. Cook, D. Crouch, S. Naylor, & J. Ryan (Eds.), Cultural turns/geographical turns: Perspectives on cultural geography (pp. 75–87). Harlow, Essex: Longman.
Wilson, J. (2014). Flying Kiwis. A history of the OE. Dunedin: Otago University Press.
Wyn, J., & Dwyer, P. (2000). New patterns of youth transition in education. International Social Science Journal, 52, 147–159.
Wyn, J., & White, R. (1997). Rethinking youth. Leonards: St. Allen and Unwin.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2015 Springer Science+Business Media Singapore
About this entry
Cite this entry
Nairn, K., Higgins, J. (2015). Stay or Go? Reading Identity Through Young People’s Lives in Rural Places. In: Wyn, J., Cahill, H. (eds) Handbook of Children and Youth Studies. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-4451-15-4_9
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-4451-15-4_9
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Singapore
Print ISBN: 978-981-4451-14-7
Online ISBN: 978-981-4451-15-4
eBook Packages: Humanities, Social Sciences and Law