Book Review: Young People in Risk Society: The Restructuring of Youth Identities and Transitions in Late Modernity, Young People, Risk and Leisure: Constructing Identities in Everyday Life

I am not totally convinced by his ‘age theory’. Undoubtedly age is a property of young people that can be used for political manipulation, but that does not mean that class, ethnicity and gender are of less importance. Best would be to discuss the matter by taking all four into account. In fact, as strongly as Phil Mizen foregrounds age in his theoretical introduction and in his conclusions, in the specific chapters on education, work and so on, age actually does not play such a comprehensive explanatory role and other factors are taken into account as well. The book is written in a style typical for much English work by (youth) sociologists (and familiar from discussions with English colleagues), making no effort to disguise a deep political engagement and solicitude for the disadvantaged and repressed in society. Through its clear structure and rich empirical material, The Changing State of Youth is especially appropriate for both younger and older students who want to learn about the relationships between youth and state and government policies. But these students should also learn how individualization and fragmentation affect contemporary youth biographies – male and female, black and white – concepts which are not as worthless as Phil Mizen suggests (pp. 10f, 186) when theorizing about the transitions of young people and transformations of societies. In tandem with the relevance of age as means of state manipulation, there is a counter-tendency to blur age as a structuring principle of youth, as may be seen in the politics and reality of lifelong learning exemplified by the younger as well as the older young person who lives in the same kind of family dependency but deals with it differently. It would be profitable, therefore, to look at young people’s life courses and life projects also from other perspectives to clarify the relationship between agency and structure. In sum, for youth sociologists Phil Mizen’s book is worth reading as it highlights an ‘age approach’ to the problems we study; for students, it introduces in an appealing way the basic problems and developments of youth and state politics. Manuela du Bois-Reymond Educational Department, Leiden University, The Netherlands