Growing up after the GFC: Untimely re-imaginings of identity, democracy and enterprise

The Global Financial Crisis has had a range of consequences, some of which, in some settings, may unfold for generations to come. So-called sovereign debt crises in Eurozone economies, the US, the UK and elsewhere, and the implementation of government austerity programs represents a successful framing of responses to the downstream effects of the GFC as being principally about State debt levels. In this discourse those that depend most on State provided payments and programs will be the ones to carry the greatest burden as governments implement austerity programs.

Today’s young people, and the generations who will follow and grow up in the unfolding aftermath of the GFC, will carry a particularly heavy burden in terms of changed education and employment opportunities; physical and mental health and well-being; consumption, housing, relationship and parenting aspirations; and a sense of self in relation to the possibilities of participation in the liberal democracies. Drawing on the work of C W Mills, Foucault and Bauman this presentation will sketch a critical research agenda for the challenges coming generations will face. This agenda will be framed by an untimely re-imagining of the possible relationships between the following key concepts, and the ways in which they re-configure understandings of generation: Identity: the ways in which young people develop and perform a sense of self on an ongoing basis in their relationships and interactions with others, and with an array of institutions and systems that structure their daily lives: Democracy: A way of understanding forms of human relationships, governance and participation in complex, globalised settings characterised by competing ideas about freedom, choice, the life-course, regulation and government: Enterprise: An idea – often too narrowly conceived in terms of individualised, market based economic activity and practice – that carries contested understandings of autonomy, aspiration, learning, development and obligations.