Migrant life stories and the Web: the experience of having your life story made public

The life stories of migrants are increasingly being told, as part of the work of cultural organizations, and websites are well suited to making such life story projects accessible to the public. However, by using the lives of real people as raw material in a public forum, Web projects raise important questions about the terms on which participants are given a voice. This article focuses on a Danish website which depicts the life stories of migrant men through written texts, audio clips, and photographs. It presents a detailed analysis of the life story of one young man from a Muslim background who has openly declared himself an atheist. The article examines his experience of having this somewhat sensitive story made public. The religious aspect inevitably positioned his story in relation to broader political debates about Muslims in Denmark. Since migrants' stories often touch on highly politicized issues, it is crucial that their stories are not co-opted by societal discourses which they do not themselves support.     

我国城镇化进程与进城农村青年的人文关怀

城镇化指农村人口转化为城镇人口的过程,是工业化、现代化进程必然经历的历史阶段。改革开放之后,我国大量农村人口向城市的转移为现代化、城镇化注入生机和活力,丰富了城镇建设的人力资源,这支力量的主体是青年。在这一过程中进城农村青年经历了很多艰辛,主要表现为权利平等、权益维护、人格尊严、资源共享、社会保障等方面的缺失,即社会人文关怀的缺失。加强对进城农村青年的人文关怀、推进市民化进程,需要制定政策、形成制度。     

二元社会结构下农村青年回乡创业社会适应性问题初探

在当前的二元社会结构下,农村青年回乡创业面临着价值观念冲突、就业理念矛盾、管理方式欠缺、教育学〉-j断层等四个方面的适应性问题。造成这种状况的原因,主要是现行的二元社会政策,以及社会因素、家庭因素和青年自身在知识结构、观念、经济基础等方面的欠缺。要提升农村青年回乡创业的适应性,需要改革修订显失公平的政策制度,针对性地解决相应的社会问题和家庭障碍,并对青年加强教育,提高可持续发展素质。     

青年类学术期刊如何提升影响力

青年类学术期刊要以地域文化和历史传统为依托,以学校学科优势和专业特长为出发点,策划特色栏目,建立健全相应的制度,以提高其在地方、期刊界、学术界读者中的影响力。     

Sexual Attitudes and Behaviors Among Adolescents

The purpose of this article is to examine the self-reported sexual attitudes and behaviors of adolescents living in the Midwest. A survey was administered to 463 African American youths ages 11–19. The results indicate that intent to have sexual intercourse, reported likelihood toward having sexual intercourse, and whether participants felt that they would have sex in the next 3 months were predictors of whether they had sexual intercourse at the 3-month follow-up. The results also revealed that the opinions of referent others did not predict sexual intercourse at 3 months. Negative attitudes toward condoms did predict condom use at 3 months and the opinions of referent others also predicted condom use at 3 months. Limitations as well as future research are also discussed.     

Community-Partnered Needs Assessment: A Strategy to Teach College Students About Health Disparities

Partnering with communities to provide service-learning opportunities for undergraduates can be an effective strategy to teach college students about health disparities. In the current study, undergraduates partnered with a public K–8 school to conduct a participatory needs assessment. College students worked directly with teachers, parents, public school students, and key stakeholders to identify and prioritize health needs, and they awarded the partnership school a grant to address physical activity and bullying. Undergraduates rated the class highly favorably and reported a deeper understanding of health disparities resulting from the service-learning activity. Health disparities research is increasingly becoming a national priority and service learning can attract future talent by providing undergraduates with the opportunity to engage in the material in a meaningful way with clear community benefit.     

The Discourse of Tattoo Consumption among Female Youth in Nigeria

Abstract

Among female youth in Nigeria, especially those living in Abuja, Nigeria’s Federal Capital Territory (FCT), and its environs, skin design or tattooing has become a trendy social ritual in reinventing the notion of the “self” or perceived personhood, according to some subjective relevance. The body, or the skin in particular, has become a site for cultural (re)production and interpretation of meaning and a symbolic resource for embodied social capital and individual agency. This article interrogates the practice of tattooing among these youth: its motivations, semiotic interpretations, and perception. It illuminates how female tattoos have helped to create a conceptual dialogue between the biological (objective) body and the social (subjective) body. The study is conceptually rooted in African feminist thoughts and postmodern perspectives about the (female) body which view it as a text that can be written, rewritten and interpreted in powerful ways through a cultural lens. The results indicate that female tattoos are symbolic investments that represent fashion, self-expression, individuality, social change and sexual agency. Fundamentally, the aesthetic and artistic female body is deployed to reconstruct postmodern female identity while protesting the mainstream stereotyped representation of women especially in a male-dominated conservative society like Nigeria.     

British Muslim youth: radicalisation,terrorism and the construction of the “other”

Academic interest in Muslim youth, Islam, radicalisation and Islamic-inspired terrorism exploded in the aftermath of 9/11, aimed at discovering the connection between Islam and terrorism, radicalisation and terrorism and how to detect and understand those who might become involved in them. Radicalisation as a process has increasingly become associated with Muslim youth, particularly male Muslim youth, as the precursor to Islamic-inspired violence against Western states. In an effort to understand these youths, the radicalisation of, or potential radicalisation of, Muslim youth is linked in the literature to alienation due to living in separate or parallel communities, identity crisis and intergenerational conflict. Because of this, terrorism, radicalism and extremism have become entangled with notions of identity, integration, segregation and multiculturalism, and this entanglement has made being a “Muslim youth” a precarious designation in the United Kingdom. This article examines some of the concepts that are central to the process of radicalisation as it is described in the literature. Using empirical data from a study with Muslim youth, the article examines the realities of the emergence of new transcultural identities and generational change amongst Muslim youth in the United Kingdom as a feature of their lived experience, rather than as evidence of a process of radicalisation.     

Youth Resilience: Can Schools Enhance Youth Factors for Hope,Optimism, and Success?

Resilience research requires attention to the factors that promote youth development and success. Youth success is associated with youth having adults in their lives who care about them and set high expectations for them to succeed; oftentimes these adults are presumed to be the children's parents. Because youth spend a great deal of time in schools, school settings may be a place where youth resilience can be fostered. In 2004, 6th-grade youth in 5 schools in Maricopa County, Arizona, were surveyed to determine if they had factors to promote their resilience. In these schools, teachers had been trained by an agency called Kids at Hope. Kids at Hope presupposes that “all children are capable of success, no exceptions” and offers an alternative paradigm to kids at risk. The results of this research show that youth who believe that they are successful and who are optimistic about themselves and their schools are more likely to find their schools to be places where they can be successful and optimistic.