Relocating Place in the Life of Neo-Liberal Youth

It has been heartening of late to note a growing focus on the importance of 'place' in the sociological literature in relation to the lives of young people. For any youth work practitioner its importance is not lost, but it has often been overlooked in academic writing as scholars (quite rightly) sought to unpick mechanisms of discrimination and inequality related to factors of class, gender, race and disability amongst others. Recently, however, many authors have noted that alongside these more traditional 'axes,' place should be incorporated into (not alongside - an important distinction) the dynamic, such is its influence

Poverty and Youth Transition

Recent years have witnessed significant changes in the social and economic context of young people’s lives. There is increasing evidence of a greater disparity between those with prospects and those without. For some, these changes represent a time of unlimited opportunity – to travel, to seek personal and spiritual fulfilment or to undertake a whole host of self-developing activities – before settling into adult life. For others however, such opportunities are still as distant as they would have appeared a half century ago. France (2008a) argues that since 1997, ‘youth policy’s primary focus has been on reducing social exclusion rather than being aimed at poverty’ (p498). Policy tends to focus on what it depicts as ‘inappropriate’ or ‘problem’ behaviour and in doing so, it ignores the structural issues which can marginalise and impoverish young people’s lives.

Young People and the ‘Entrepreneurial Self’

The notion of ‘choice’ is particularly strong today in public discourse and reflects the increased marketization of our society. As such, young people are expected to have the capacity to be ‘rational planners’ of their future – making short-term decisions based on a long-term goal. Evidence suggests that young people are happy to embrace this challenge, becoming self-managers of an imagined future, accepting the responsibility to create a pathway from youth to adulthood. Of course, in modern society it’s never that simple

The Young Unemployed and a ‘Perfect Storm’ of Stigmatisation

During the course of my research I interviewed a number of young people who have made a conscious decision to not apply for social security. At first this baffled me as every single young person in this situation was entitled to do so. But when their reasons for not taking up entitlements became clear, I could well understand their decision even if it further impoverished already struggling households. What is apparent from the interviews I’ve carried out is the sense of stigma and shame that the young people feel from the potential of accessing social security. Baumberg (2016) makes the point that ‘benefits stigma’ has seen a resurgence in 21st Century Britain due to a number of overlapping factors. He describes ‘personal stigma’ in this context as ‘a person’s own feeling that claiming benefits conveys a devalued identity’ (p183). It’s clear that such a description chimes with what the young people have been telling me, that they feel claiming benefits would result in them feeling ashamed – and lesser – should they access their entitlements

Informal Learning Experiences of Young People During the Scottish Independence Referendum

In the aftermath of the independence referendum of September 2014 we decided to conduct research on how people learned and educated themselves informally leading up to the vote. Given the range of information and issues people faced, particularly over the final six months of the process, hearing how people made sense of it all is clearly an area of interest – particularly for academics, community educators and politicians. Through an online survey conducted in December 2014, we asked people a series of questions to ascertain, amongst other things, how and where they gained information, how they interacted with that information and how they utilised social media (if they did so)

Yes or No? Older people, politics and the Scottish Referendum in 2014

In this article we report on the issues, experiences and patterns of response to the independence referendum with particular reference to older voters. By older voters we are referring to the 61+ age group, although information cited from different opinion polls can refer to slightly different age ranges. We interpret the data through the lens of informal learning, that is, by understanding the referendum as a process of action and reflection that developed as people engaged with the arguments through different media and educative experiences in everyday life environments. Our view differs markedly from the dominant narrative applied to explain the pattern of voting amongst older members of the Scottish electorate

Yes or No? Older people, politics and the Scottish Referendum in 2014

In this article we report on the issues, experiences and patterns of response to the independence referendum with particular reference to older voters. By older voters we are referring to the 61+ age group, although information cited from different opinion polls can refer to slightly different age ranges. We interpret the data through the lens of informal learning, that is, by understanding the referendum as a process of action and reflection that developed as people engaged with the arguments through different media and educative experiences in everyday life environments. Our view differs markedly from the dominant narrative applied to explain the pattern of voting amongst older members of the Scottish electorate

The 5th International Conference on Food Digestion . Introduction

Unravelling the fate of food in the gastrointestinal tract is essential to better understand the health effects of the food and to fight against diet-related pathologies such as cardiovascular diseases and type-2 diabetes. Digestion is the process that transforms food into nutrients. The first step of digestion occurs in the mouth, where mastication transforms solid and semi-solid foods into particles while mixing with saliva allows bolus formation and initiates digestion of carbohydrates.Then the bolus is transferred into the stomach, where acid conditions and specific enzymes (pepsin, gastric lipase) start hydrolyzing macronutrients like proteins and triglycerides. The next step occurs in the small intestine, where other digestive enzymes further degrade macronutrients allowing their absorption. In the small intestine, proteins are hydrolyzed by trypsin, chymotrypsin, elastase, carboxypeptidase etc, lipids by pancreatic lipases, and carbohydrates by pancreaticamylase. Small intestinal digestion is completed by the enzymes of the brush border membrane that release macronutrients, which can be absorbed by enterocytes to reach the bloodstream. Undigested material,fiber for example, reaches the large intestine where it is further metabolized by the intestinal microbiota.Investigating food digestion requires the use of models and a myriad of in vitro (static and dynamic), animal and human models have been described in the literature with the objectives of understanding the fateof food in the gastrointestinal tract. In particular, static in vitro digestion simulations are extremely popular because they are very easy to use and do not require sophisticated equipment. They have been shown to beadapted for screening large series of similar samples in identical conditions or to understand interactions at the molecular scale (Bohn et al.,2017). However, they are too simple to study more complex phenomenaand the kinetics of food digestion for which dynamic in vitro models are more appropriate (Dupont et al., 2018).There was a high heterogeneity between the different static in vitro digestion models that were used by the research groups all around the world. Models were differing in the pH used in the different phases(gastric and intestinal), their duration, the digestive enzyme/substrate ratio, etc For that reason, comparing results obtained from one study to another was impossible and there was a crucial need for a harmonizedmethod that could be used by everyone allowing comparison between studies. This was one of the main objectives of the INFOGEST COST Action