Conceptualizing Well-being in Youth: The Potential of Youth Clubs
Journal article, Peer reviewed
Accepted version
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https://hdl.handle.net/10642/8825Utgivelsesdato
2020-07-12Metadata
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Originalversjon
Eriksen, Seland. Conceptualizing Well-being in Youth: The Potential of Youth Clubs. Young - Nordic Journal of Youth Research. 2020 https://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1103308820937571Sammendrag
This study identifies key mechanisms in youth clubs for fostering well-being
among vulnerable youths. We develop a framework to conceptualise
prerequisites of well-being in youth, namely having a safe place to be, positive
relations with others and possibilities for growth. This conceptualisation
maintains insights from psychological elements of well-being while bringing
psychosocial theory of identity in youth into a sociological orientation.
Understanding youth as a dynamic and situated phase expands the investigation
of both well-being and youth clubs from merely revolving around ‘risk’ and
‘protection’. Based on interviews with youth workers and participants in youth
clubs in Norway, the paper describes how ‘hanging out’ in adult-supervised but
otherwise unstructured spaces provides youths with safety, belonging and a
gradual sense of mastery. As such, the club may function as an institutionalised
safe space and gives time, a ‘moratorium’, offering vulnerable youths shelter
from adult responsibilities and the acceleration of societal demands.