Youth studies, citizenship and transitions: towards a new research agenda

© 2017 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. A key goal in youth studies is to gain holistic understandings of what it means to be young. However, a significant impediment to achieving this has been the tendency of youth studies to develop along siloed and stratified subfields. In keeping with the goal of creating more productive dialogue between subfields in youth studies, this paper examines the intersections between research in youth citizenship and youth transitions to consider the fresh insights and cross fertilisations that such an analysis may yield. This examination reveals a sense of dissatisfaction in both subfields with traditional normative and linear models of citizenship and transitions which rely on step-wise and sequential notions of time. In response, the paper advances a new research agenda which posits more temporally, spatially and relationally-sensitive understandings of youth citizenship and transition. Drawing on Ingold (2007. Lines: A brief history. London: Routledge), this agenda proposes the use of three alternative metaphors–genealogical, wayfaring and threads–which could hold the potential to unsettle the normativity and linearity of previous youth transitions and citizenship frameworks, and thus provide deeper insights into what it means to live and to be young citizens in times of transition.