Precarious Hope: Situated Perspectives on the COVID-19 Pandemic from Undergraduate Students in Manchester, UK

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a profound impact on the lives of young people, transforming and disrupting education provision, employment opportunities, social practices, mobilities, and experiences of health and well-being. In the UK context, the pandemic can be understood as both a unique event and as a further addition to the intersecting crises—including austerity and Brexit—that are increasingly shaping and constraining youth experiences and aspirations and exacerbating precarity and inequality. In this article, seven undergraduate students from Manchester, UK, with two academic co-authors, employ a co-productive approach to reflect on our experiences of the pandemic. Our autoethnographic accounts draw attention to the situated effects of the pandemic, and its intersection with existing challenges and pressures, including the gig economy, mental and physical ill health, and transnational family networks. At the same time, our narratives capture a sense of precarious hope: hopefulness that is both a product of precarity and itself precarious, opening up new possibilities for collectively imagining and pursuing viable and meaningful futures in uncertain times. Supporting our endeavours requires the inclusion of youth voices in research, policy, and practice; work we begin here.

Relationships between Self-Efficacy, Job Instability, Decent Work, and Life Satisfaction in A Sample of Italian, Swiss, and Spanish Students

“…Based on their findings, Etehadi and Katarepo [63] suggest that job insecurity erodes self-efficacy, as it hinders employees' development. Finally, the negative relation between perceived job instability, subjective well-being, and life satisfaction that we have found in this work is consistent with many empirical studies [7,9,10,64].…”

“…Previous studies have shown that job instability and job insecurity are related to low levels of job satisfaction [6], subjective well-being [7,8], and life satisfaction [9]. This is even more true for young people; we agree with Nunn and colleagues [10] that young people's lives were already precarious before the pandemic (e.g., [11,12]), as "precarity is the condition of our time" [13] (p. 20), primarily in relation to the labor market. In fact, the pandemic has only additionally amplified the existing challenges in youth transition toward the labor market.…”

“…In fact, the pandemic has only additionally amplified the existing challenges in youth transition toward the labor market. Young people are significantly more likely than older adults to have experienced job loss and to be unemployed; young people, already before the pandemic, had to face higher under/unemployment rates [10]. They are also more likely to be precarious workers without access to formal entitlements and protections [11].…”

“…They are also more likely to be precarious workers without access to formal entitlements and protections [11]. Using Nunn and colleagues' words [10] (p. 432) "the pandemic has eroded young people's confidence about future work and careers and increased uncertainty among those undertaking key transitions ( [14][15][16])".…”

Making Sense of Intersecting Crises: Promises, Challenges, and Possibilities of Intersectional Perspectives in Youth Research

“…Critically, they are exacerbating and extending persistent structural inequalities associated with class, race/ethnicity, gender, sexuality, (dis)ability, and age at a time when ‘transitions to adulthood have become longer, fuzzier, and more complex’ (Macdonald et al 2019 :1). Yet, in grappling with these intersecting crises and troubled transitions, young people are giving rise to new spaces, practices, and conversations that challenge the status quo and create possibilities for more hopeful futures (Hanckel and Chandra 2021 ; Woodrow and Moore 2021 ; Nunn et al 2021 ; Bowman and Pickard 2021 ). Centering these intersecting crises and their effects is critical for the field of youth studies as we seek to make sense of contemporary young people’s lives and experiences.…”