Top girls navigating austere times: interrogating youth transitions since the ‘crisis’

ABSTRACT

Since the 1990s, young women in the West have been addressed as ‘Top Girls’, symbols of social progress and emblems of a new meritocracy. The 2008 financial crash and subsequent implementation of austerity measures have further called into question the realisation of such promise and potential as evidence suggests that the young and women have suffered disproportionately within the post-crash landscape in the UK and beyond. This paper draws on longitudinal data to interrogate the promises and failures of neoliberal and post-feminist articulations of aspiration and meritocracy as these are lived and negotiated by young women making transitions in the midst of the ‘crisis’. Attending to the biographical accounts of two participants occupying different class locations, I explore their transitions and perceptions of the uncertainties and risks characterising ‘austere times’. I demonstrate how, despite similarities in their experiences of a stunted graduate labour market, social class shaped how they responded to and made sense of the pressures and predicaments they encountered.

KEYWORDS:

• Austerity
• crisis
• gender
• generation
• social class
• transitions

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the British Academy for funding this project (SG121856) and the participants for sharing their accounts with me. I am especially grateful to Rob MacDonald and Sumi Hollingworth for the thoughtful feedback they provided on this paper. Finally, I am grateful to the three reviewers for their generous comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Selfridges is an up-market shopping store associated with expensive and luxury goods.

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded by the British Academy and Leverhulme trust Small Grant scheme under grant number [SG121856].