1st Edition
Young People, Social Capital and Ethnic Identity
Social capital and ethnicity are crucial to young people’s understandings of their social world. The strong bonding networks often assumed in ethnic groups suggest that individuals may prefer to be bonded to each other according to shared socio-cultural factors such as shared histories, memories, language, customs, traditions and values. However, bridging forms of social capital allow new understandings of ethnic identities to emerge, and which involve dynamic and complex social processes that are continually changing and evolving according to time, location and context.
This book explores the ways in which the concepts of social capital and ethnicity play a central role in young people’s relationships, participation in wider social networks and the construction of identities. Researchers and scholars working in the fields of children and youth studies, education, families, social and racial and ethnic studies, offer differing accounts of the ways in which social capital operates in young people’s lives across diverse social settings and ethnic groups. This edited book is timely and significant given the public interest of researchers, academics, politicians and policymakers working in areas of youth and community work, race relations and cultural diversity.
This book was published as a special issue of Ethnic and Racial Studies.
1. Introduction: Young people, social capital and ethnic identity Tracey Reynolds – London South Bank University
2. In Transition: Young people in Northern Ireland growing up in, and out of, divided communities Sheena McGrellis – Ulster University
3. Growing up affiliated with a religious minority: Finnish Adventist young people’s identities, socialization and social capital Arniika Kussisto – University of Helsinki
4. Transnational family networks, cultural belonging and social capital among second-generation British-Caribbean Returning Migrants Tracey Reynolds – London South Bank University
5. Solidarity and reciprocity in the everyday life of Italian young people: the positive and negative sides of social capital Elisabetta Zontini – University of Nottingham
6. Young South Asian women in Higher Education: aspirations and social capital Shaminder Takhar – London South Bank University
7. Racial identity, social capital and care leavers: risk and protective factors Ravinder Barn – Royal Holloway, University of London
8. "True stories from bare times on road": Developing empowerment, identity and social capital among urban minority ethnic young people in London, U.K. Daniel Briggs – London South Bank University
9. Young people’s social capital: complex identities and dynamic networks Susie Weller – London South Bank University
10. Conclusion - Tracey Reynolds with the Families and Social Capital Collective
Biography
Tracey Reynolds is a Senior Research Fellow at the Families and Social Capital Research Group, London South Bank University.
