The Search for Stability in Stoke: A Harm-Based Ultra-Realist Ethnography of Young People’s Transitions into Adulthood

This thesis is a re-engagement with traditional British youth studies, offering both a novice and yet revitalised insight into what it means to be young today. In utilising a harm-based ultra-realist perspective this research provides a critical and holistic account of the impact current political, economic and social conditions have on young people during this vital life stage transition, accounting for the harms that are produced at macro, meso and micro levels. This qualitative, ethnographically informed study presents a considered and critical exploration of the experiential realities of young people aged 18-29 in Stoke-on-Trent.

The findings of this study are indicative of the harmful world in which young people in the City of Stoke-on-Trent and the UK more broadly now experience the transition into adulthood. This is no longer a period primarily characterised by personal exploration, development and the achievement of the milestones traditionally associated with the transition into adulthood. Instead, it is a time of precarity, instability and anxiety caused by neoliberal systemic structures and the internalisation of neoliberal values and philosophies that amplify the felt effects of such insecurity in a seemingly never ending cycle. In a time where any real social and political change is unlikely, these conditions offer a less than advantageous view of the future for young people as they remain unprotected from the harms of neoliberalism.