BOOK REVIEW: Cuervo, H., & Wyn, J. (2012). Young People Making it Work: Continuity and Change in Rural Places. Victoria, Australia: Melbourne University Press. 208 pages, ill., ISBN: 9780522860979

Kryst, Erica L

English

Lehigh University: Lehigh Preserve

FIRE: Forum for International Research in Education
Volume 1 | Issue 1 Article 2
2014
BOOK REVIEW: Cuervo, H., & Wyn, J. (2012).
Young People Making it Work: Continuity and
Change in Rural Places. Victoria, Australia:
Melbourne University Press. 208 pages, ill., ISBN:
9780522860979.
Erica L. Kryst
The Pennsylvania State University, ell140@psu.edu
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Recommended Citation
Kryst, E. L. (2014). BOOK REVIEW: Cuervo, H., & Wyn, J. (2012). Young People Making it Work: Continuity and Change in Rural
Places. Victoria, Australia: Melbourne University Press. 208 pages, ill., ISBN: 9780522860979.. FIRE: Forum for International Research
in Education, 1(1). http://dx.doi.org/10.18275/fire201401011009
BOOK REVIEW: Cuervo, H., & Wyn, J. (2012). Young People Making it
Work: Continuity and Change in Rural Places. Victoria, Australia:
Melbourne University Press. 208 pages, ill., ISBN: 9780522860979.
Abstract
BOOK REVIEW: Cuervo, H., & Wyn, J. (2012). Young People Making it Work: Continuity and Change in Rural
Places. Victoria, Australia: Melbourne University Press. 208 pages, ill., ISBN: 9780522860979.
Keywords
rural education, rural youth, college attendance, rural urban differences, higher education, rural economics,
young adults, social justice
This book review is available in FIRE: Forum for International Research in Education: https://preserve.lehigh.edu/fire/vol1/iss1/2
 FIRE - Forum for International Research in Education 
Vol. 1, Iss. 1, 2014, pp. 1-6 
 
 
 
 
© Lehigh University 
BOOK REVIEW: Cuervo, H., & Wyn, J. (2012). 
Young People Making it Work: Continuity and 
Change in Rural Places. Victoria, Australia: 
Melbourne University Press.  208 pages, ill., ISBN: 
9780522860979. 
 
Erica L. Kryst1 
Pennsylvania State University, USA 
 
 
 
In this dynamic and lengthy study of the trajectories of young people in rural 
Australia, Cuervo and Wyn examine how youth make meaning of their lives in 
relation to rural places. Through an extensive look at the choices young people 
make regarding education, employment, family, and location, Cuervo and Wyn 
uncover a startling reality. Contrary to current discourses about rural “brain drain” 
and education used as a way to leave rural places (Carr & Kefalas, 2009), the 
authors capture youth navigating complex pathways in order to obtain further and 
higher education – as a way to remain in rural.  
In Young People Making it Work, Cuervo and Wyn wrestle with the 
intersections of education, work, family, and place in regard to the paths young 
people take. Several themes guide the analysis.  First, they seek to understand the 
relationship between age, biography, and location by studying young people’s life 
choices as they interact with their spatial context over time.  They pay close 
attention to how “youth” is constructed in the literature in order to demonstrate 
the relevance of cultural understandings of “youth” to this study. Additionally, the 
authors identify belonging, social justice, and generational characteristics as key 
themes in their analysis. It is important to note that the chapters in this text are 
written to stand apart so they can be downloaded separately by the reader, but 
together they contribute to a consistent message. 
In chapter one, Cuervo and Wyn frame their exploration of rural youths’ 
trajectories, by outlining the social, political, and economic challenges facing all 
youth, but particularly rural youth. Specifically, the rise of neoliberalism in 
                                                 
 
1
 Correspondence: Erica L. Kryst, Penn State University, 311 Rackley Building, University Park, 
PA 16802, USA; Email: ell140@psu.edu   
   
2     E. L. Kryst 
 
FIRE - Forum for International Research in Education 
Australian politics, the changing labor market, and demographic population shifts 
in rural areas are some of the forces that shape the biographies of rural youth. 
They also put forth a useful explanation of how rural spaces are used today in 
Australia; mainly for production, consumption, and protection. They set a solid 
context through which to understand the challenges facing rural youth.   
The methods used in this study capture a significant representation of 
youths’ experiences in Australia (p. 11). Cuervo and Wyn, both of whom are 
associated with the Youth Research Centre at the University of Melbourne benefit 
from use of the Life Patterns research program, a data set collected over 20 years. 
The program is a longitudinal panel study that began in 1991 and includes two 
cohorts of participants. The first cohort, born in 1973, is referred to as generation 
X, while the second cohort, born in 1988-1989, is referred to as generation Y. 
Participants from the generation X cohort participated in surveys beginning in 
1992, and in 1996 the cohort size was demographically tailored and reduced to 
better reflect the demographic characteristics of the population. Since 1996, this 
group participated in surveys every two years and approximately 50-100 
participants participated in in-depth interviews.  In 2011, 19 individuals from this 
cohort who self-identified as rural were selected to participate in in-depth 
interviews, from which the qualitative data in this book is drawn (Chapters 4, 5, 
and 6). The participants from generation Y were first surveyed in 2005 and then 
surveyed again in 2007, 2008, and 2010.  
In addition to the breadth of information the researchers were able to 
gather about the participants, there are many benefits to a study conducted over 
such a long period of time. The participants from generation X were in their late 
thirties at the time of the in-depth interviews.  Following participants over the 
course of 20 years allowed the researchers to capture the whole story, rather than 
just a snapshot of the participants’ decisions about education, work, and family. 
The opportunity to examine participants’ life courses from high school graduation 
to almost middle age also allowed for observations to be made not only about the 
choices they made, but also the choices that are actually available to rural youth 
because of their location.  
It is important to note that the overall findings in this study did not pertain 
only to rural youth. The surveys were administered to youth in rural, urban, and 
regional areas over a 20-year period, enabling the authors to make comparisons 
about youth from different locations. In general, all respondents expressed the 
belief that traditional pathways to adult success that had been available to their 
parents and previous generations would not be available to them. Meaning that in 
an increasingly global and knowledge based economy, these youth would have to 
obtain further and higher education in order to be successful. As a result, 
education is used more pragmatically by these generations.   
Book Review: Young People Making it Work     3 
 
 
FIRE - Forum for International Research in Education 
In chapter five, Cuervo and Wyn consider “belonging” as a factor in the 
educational decision making process of rural youth. Decisions about further and 
higher education are impacted by the participants’ feelings about belonging in 
their home community. This argument centers on theoretical perspectives found 
in the literature about belonging, but pays particular attention to Bourdieu’s 
concept of habitus. According to Bourdieu, habitus consists of “practices and 
representations which can be objectively ‘regulated’ and regular without in 
anyway being the product of rules…collectively orchestrated without being the 
product of the orchestrating action of a conductor” (as cited in Buchli, 2004, p. 
107). Cuervo and Wyn conceptualize habitus as “the process of personhood and 
being that are an outcome of interactions between individuals and their 
environments” (p. 127). The authors put forth, for their purposes, a workable 
conceptualization of habitus that corresponds with how they understand rural 
youths’ perceptions of their relationship to their home community. They 
effectively use this concept to explain the dilemma their participants face in 
pursuing higher education. For these participants, this dilemma manifests itself in 
the perceived risk they face in leaving rural spaces to pursue further education and 
the potential consequences that this decision could have on participants’ rural 
identities and the sense of belonging they experience with their home 
communities. 
The authors also present rural youths’ beliefs about the meaning and 
availability of work in rural spaces. Cuervo and Wyn, observed that youth in rural 
areas were more likely to pursue employment immediately after completing 
secondary education and that rural youth in general place a great deal of 
importance on work. In rural areas, work opportunities tend to be strongly 
gendered and males were typically more continuously employed than females. 
Rural youths’ choices about work and education shaped choices about family life 
and other traditional adult rites of passages, such as moving out of one’s parents’ 
house, marriage, or buying a house.  
In chapter six, titled “Working the Land,” Cuervo and Wyn expand on 
their analysis of employment patterns by taking on a typical discourse found in 
literature on rural spaces: farming.  The particular salience of this chapter is that 
Cuervo and Wyn explain an overarching phenomenon of rural places; that while 
farming is almost synonymous with “rurality,” the decline of small farming is 
widespread. The participants spoke of decreased opportunities for the 
intergenerational transfer of family farms as well as an increased need for 
advanced vocational and technical skills in order to be successful in farming and 
other production jobs. Surprisingly, both men and women identified education as 
a way to remain in their rural communities, by pursuing programs of study that 
would enable them to find jobs in their home communities in areas such as 
4     E. L. Kryst 
 
FIRE - Forum for International Research in Education 
nursing, teaching, management, and vocational professions. Ultimately, through 
interviews with rural participants about their educational and vocational 
trajectories, it is revealed that education is used not only as a way out of rural 
communities, but also as a way to stay.  
Perhaps what will be most useful to researchers in rural education is the 
author’s discussion of what “rural” means (p. 10) and how rural spaces have 
evolved since the 1980s (Chapter 1). In defining rural, the authors reflect on a 
variety of beliefs held about the concept, including several perspectives that 
define rural and urban as dichotomous spaces. The rural and urban dichotomy 
often portrays rural spaces as primarily places where little change takes place and 
where life is idyllic; whereas urban spaces are full of progress, vivacity and 
constant renewal. Cuervo and Wyn however adopt Bourke and Lockie’s view of 
rural as “a ‘multidimensional concept, symbolically constructed and both 
historically and culturally contingent’” (as cited in Cuervo & Wyn, 2012, p. 11). 
Cuervo and Wyn’s conceptualization of rural spaces as both diverse and dynamic 
allows the reader to see what these spaces may mean historically and in their 
current cultural context.  
In chapter four, we learn about the challenges faced by rural youth on the 
path to higher education. The interviews revealed that the necessity of pursuing 
higher education poses additional challenges to rural youth who, for the most part, 
have to leave their home communities in order to obtain higher educational 
credentials. Young People Making it Work reveals that rural youth use “complex 
pathways” in their pursuit of education. Almost all of the rural youth in this study 
recognized that education was vital for obtaining employment and undertook 
some kind of further or higher educational study at some point in the 20-year 
period after high school. However, for these participants, the path to education 
was not a linear one. These rural participants balanced families, job changes, and 
other aspects of life while pursuing further and higher education.  Understanding 
that rural youth may not follow the traditional pathways of college attendance 
might aid in the creation of better policies concerning access and financial aid for 
students of all ages who come from rural areas.  
From the very beginning of Young People Making it Work, you get the 
sense that the authors are trying to say something new about rural youths’ life 
chances and their relationship to their spatial context. In doing so, Cuervo and 
Wyn demonstrate that this is a distinctive generation of young people who have 
had to navigate adult life paths in increasingly complex economic and political 
times. Their relationships to place, and in turn their strong relationships with their 
families, have provided them with the support they need to do so. 
Young People Making it Work contributes to literature that uses place as a 
lens through which to analyze how young people make decisions about their lives. 
Book Review: Young People Making it Work     5 
 
 
FIRE - Forum for International Research in Education 
It also provides a broader context for understanding not only youth from rural 
spaces, but the distinctiveness of an entire generation of youth and what they face 
politically, economically, and socially as they transition to adult roles. This book 
also contributes to literature on rural education by demonstrating the risks rural 
youth take in pursuing higher education; and the pressure that one’s habitus 
creates for rural students as they leave their home communities. Those youth who 
did leave their communities to pursue higher education spoke of finding students 
with similar backgrounds while on campus as a means of support. In light of these 
findings, further study may be warranted at an international level on how college 
students from rural areas adjust to campus life. Having a better understanding of 
the support mechanisms used as well as the support services needed by rural 
youth may help them persist in college. Would rural youths’ pathways to higher 
education be less complex if more was done to facilitate their transitions away 
from their home communities?  
This book provides insight into how rural communities not only benefit 
from youth returning to their communities, but also prompts us to think about how 
we might better facilitate the “staying” of youth rather than the leaving. A closer 
examination of rural economies and labor opportunities, as well as the 
accessibility of further and higher educational opportunities might facilitate more 
youth “staying” rural. Further research might also consider how the rise of online 
degree programs, free massive open online courses (MOOCs), and increased 
internet access may impact rural youths’ ability to stay in their communities.  
Cuervo and Wyn leave very little to critique about their methods but the 
substance of the book leaves a few questions unanswered. From this reader’s 
perspective, it would have been useful to include a map of the Australian region 
referenced in this study in order to better understand the proximity of regions and 
cities mentioned by the participants.  A brief explanation of the structure of the 
compulsory education system in Australia and an overview of the further and 
higher education opportunities available to Australian youth would also have been 
useful. This information would be used to better understand how the educational 
opportunities available to rural youth in Australia compare to those of other 
countries in order to view the findings from this book through other contexts. 
Lastly, the authors could have pursued a more comparative approach to this 
analysis. While other countries, including the United States, were mentioned here 
and there throughout the book, it would have been worthwhile to include a 
chapter that offers comparisons between rural youth’s educational paths and 
opportunities in other countries in order to better determine the universality of 
these results. Still, this work serves as a starting point for research on the 
educational trajectories of rural youth in many other countries.  
6     E. L. Kryst 
 
FIRE - Forum for International Research in Education 
This book adds depth to the literature that focuses on the complexity of the 
challenges facing rural youth, while also presenting a less common perspective on 
the educational choices made by rural youth. While the dominant discourse on 
rural youth emphasizes education as a means for leaving rural spaces, Cuervo and 
Wyn demonstrate participants’ use of education as a way to stay rural. The 
authors’ overall emphasis on the importance of place and age in the construction 
of habitus provide future researchers with a contextually specific theoretical 
framework through which to conduct more comparative studies on rural youths’ 
educational trajectories. In addition to the power of the findings, the authors’ 
discussion and examination of how the field of educational research, specifically 
the field of research in rural education, conceptualizes the term “rural” becomes 
another useful model for future research. Their efforts to frame what rural means 
move the field away from a dichotomous representation of rural as anything non-
urban, to a more diverse understanding of rural places. Removing the negative 
stigma attached to the experiences of rural youth and rural places is a fruitful 
starting point for future policy and research. 
 
References 
Bourdieu, P. (1997, 2004). Outline of a Theory of Practice (pp. 107-134). In V. 
Buchli (Ed.), Material culture: Critical concepts in the social sciences 
(Vol. II). New York, NY: Routledge.  
Carr, P. J., & Kefalas, M. J. (2009). Hollowing out the middle: The rural brain 
drain and what it means for America. Boston, MA: Beacon Press. 
About the Author 
Erica Lopatofsky Kryst, MSEd, is pursuing a dual-title PhD in Educational 
Theory and Policy and Comparative and International Education from 
Pennsylvania State University, USA. Her research interests include the 
educational trajectories of rural youth, youth educational outcomes in post-
socialist Eastern Europe, and rural identity in the United Stated and abroad. 
 


BOOK REVIEW: Cuervo, H., & Wyn, J. (2012). Young People Making it Work: Continuity and Change in Rural Places. Victoria, Australia: Melbourne University Press.  208 pages, ill., ISBN: 9780522860979.

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BOOK REVIEW: Cuervo, H., & Wyn, J. (2012). Young People Making it Work: Continuity and Change in Rural Places. Victoria, Australia: Melbourne University Press. 208 pages, ill., ISBN: 9780522860979.

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