Youth and Leisure in Europe in an Age of Austerity

Despite young people’s above-average risks of unemployment in most countries, the evidence to date suggests that young people’s leisure has remained largely austerity-free. This is explained not in terms of historically novel features of the recession itself, but in terms of changes in youth’s leisure that occurred in preceding decades with the lengthening of the youth life stage, the advent of new leisure industries based on the latest information and communication technologies, and changes in the pattern of class inequalities. The evidence indicates that it is child-rearing households whose leisure has proved most vulnerable during the recession, which has implications for leisure socialisation during childhood, which will have lifelong consequences.