School to Work Transitions in an Era of Financialisation and Digitalisation

Steven Threadgold (University of Newcastle, Australia)

Public concern about young people’s social media use is at an all-time high. In Australia, the Federal government has proposed ‘social media bans’ to restrict use for under-16s; in the UK there is talk of banning phones in schools. These examples highlight generalised anxiety around the implications of children and young people’s digital lives, even though most informed experts on this topic see these kinds of bans as counter-productive and unlikely to be able to be properly implemented. At the same time, there is growing academic and public concern about multinational digital corporations’ use of personal data and the insidious implications for increased tracking, surveillance, and monetization of young people’s daily lives. However, public understanding of these processes is currently limited because the ‘backstage’ of data mining typically proceeds without their knowledge or active, informed consent. This presentation will discuss various aspects of these processes and what it means for school to work youth transitions and young people’s lives more generally. I will present data from a range of Newcastle Youth Studies Centre projects on how young people’s practices on various digital platforms engage with or are engaged by the data gaze, with specific attention paid to the rise of fintech. We show how there are distinctions of how the data gaze works in various contexts, but importantly, differences in how young people ‘gaze back’. There are different dimensions of the data gaze where the classificatory logics of algorithmic and machinic gazes intersect with (and sometimes cross over) with young people’s own capacities to see and know themselves.

Steven Threadgold is Associate Professor of Sociology the Director of the Newcastle Youth Studies Centre at University of Newcastle, Australia. His research focuses on youth and class, with particular interests in unequal and alternative work and career trajectories; underground and independent creative scenes; cultural formations of taste, and financial practices and fintech. Steve an Associate Editor of Journal of Youth Studies, and on the Editorial Boards of The Sociological Review, DIY, Alternative Culture & Society, and Journal of Applied Youth Studies. His latest book is Bourdieu and Affect: Towards a Theory of Affective Affinities (Bristol University Press). Youth, Class and Everyday Struggles (Routledge) won the 2020 Raewyn Connell Prize for best first book in Australian sociology. His latest edited collection with Jessica Gerrard is Class in Australia. He is currently leading an ARC DP called Young People, Fintech Use and Future Financial Security. Contact at steven.threadgold@newcastle.edu.au