BeSS

Youth studies have shown a fragmentation of the values and worldviews of young people, which presumably also brings about the development of a new kind of social capital and socially negotiated ties and relationships. In order to understand how social relationships, networks and trust are formed and how they are transmitted intergenerationally, it is essential to study young people – those all too often left “Behind the Scenes” of the society. To study social capital and socialisation among young people is very timely, because young people’s rights and access to social power are presently very rare. It could be claimed that studying young people, as the new generation, gives information on the importance of identity formation and identity capital in the late modernity, as well as defines individual’s legal, political and social relationship to the society.

Finnish society has changed very quickly in intimate relationships, and thus, there is a strong call for new research addressing young people’s social capital in the context of identity formation, and, aspiring to answer that, the aims of this research are the following: 1) producing concrete information on the structure of the social capital and identity capital among young people in the Finnish Society, 2) analysing family relationships and social networks of young people, and the way in which these enable increasing social capital, 3) investigating how young people form cohesive social and moral norms of trust and co-operation in the contexts of social class, ethnicity, gender and youth culture, religious identity, intergenerational values, worldviews and ideologies, and 4) studying the traditional and the information technology based social networks of young people. The project includes five different themes to the concept of social capital, and as a result, four doctoral theses will be produced. Our theoretical background comes from James E. Côté and Charles G. Levine’s concept ‘identity capital’, as individual’s identity resources for life. It is assumed that social capital is connected with young people’s identity capital and identity formation. The project will clarify young people’s social capital and networks of trust in the light of the identity capital theory.

The project has an interdisciplinary framework and it takes a comparative approach to the study of social capital of young people. The project is composed by a diversity of qualitative and quantitative empirical material. Data has been or is being gathered separately for each researcher participating the project. There are two longitudinal studies included, alongside with the three studies concentrating on describing particularly the life situations of the present-day youth.

The research project has connections to several national and international projects. The partners linked to this research have extensive experience of the production and maintenance of comparative data, and they have also international collaborative links with other studies of young people in Nordic countries and elsewhere in Europe.

The project is to be carried out 1.1.2004 – 31.12.2006. Within this framework we will arrange regular team meetings, workshops, and both a national and an international seminar on the concept of social capital. Alongside with the team members, foreign consultants, prof. James Coté (Ontario University) and prof. John Bynner (University of London) will be invited to the workshops and seminars. Helena Helve will supply the team’s academic leadership supported by the doctoral students’ tutoring professors. Study results will be reported in academic journal articles, and there will also be a joint publication presenting the most important research outcomes.

See Figure: The Concepts of the Research