عنوان

Youth transitions and social change in Kuwait :

Number

TLets754390

Title Proper

Youth transitions and social change in Kuwait :

General Material Designation

[Thesis]

First Statement of Responsibility

Alnaser, Fatimah AbdulameerAlnaser, Fatimah Abdulameer

Name of Publisher, Distributor, etc.

University of Glasgow

Date of Publication, Distribution, etc.

2018

Dissertation or thesis details and type of degree

Thesis (Ph.D.)

Text preceding or following the note

2018

Text of Note

Within the social sciences, there is extensive literature on youth transitions as a key context for understanding how social changes and complex contemporary life have an impact on young people's lives, focusing generally on the 'global north'. However, far too little attention has been paid to exploring youth transitions in the 'global south'. Even if it is acknowledged that youth research in the global south has grown in recent years, and has discovered different youth experiences from those in northern contexts, these studies have still been narrow and mostly based on theoretical rather than new empirical work. This research addresses the research gap by investigating young people's transition from education to the labour market, and exploring the impact of social changes on their lives beyond the global north, in Kuwaiti society. It provides insight into how contemporary young people are constructing and negotiating their pathways to work within a complex reality in which traditional norms and cultural restrictions come into conflict with modernity. It highlights the role of certain variables that continue to mould their transition, including family, gender, religion, education, and government policies. It demonstrates that the rapid change and the compressed manner of modernity in Kuwait have made young people live in a state of tension and contradiction between modernity and tradition, agency and structure, and individual and collective ways of life. It shows how the unique nature of modernity and its consequences in Kuwaiti society have made the young people's experience distinct from that described in other contexts. This study draws on data generated through questionnaires and interviews. It involves a sample of 1,120 secondary school students, and 24 young adults who had recently entered the labour market. The thesis, which reports the results, challenges existing models in the youth studies literature and critically assesses general sociological theories which tend to be northern-centric. In considering the ideas of the German sociologist Ulrich Beck on modernisation and individualisation, it is difficult to apply his western ideas to the Kuwaiti context. This thesis therefore calls for a cosmopolitan sociology, claiming the need to re-define the concepts within social sciences in such a way that can be easily and flexibly used in a variety of global contexts.

University of Glasgow

University of Glasgow

Electronic name

p

[Thesis]

276903

a

Y