On Thursday 4th May, in the Moneo Building of the Murcia City Council, the report “Young people in crisis: Diagnosis on the situation of the young population in the Municipality of Murcia” has been presented. The report was prepared by the Department of Sociology of the University of Murcia on behalf of the Department of Youth, Equality and Cooperation of the City Council of Murcia in the framework of the European Project REACT.
Those we define as young people are generally people between the ages of 16 and under 30.
A current snapshot of this age group would confirm one fact: they a generation characterised by the permanent experience of a crisis, be it the economic-financial crisis of 2010, the pandemic crisis of 2020, the current war crisis, or the deep ecological crisis of 2020.
A generation whose external environment is in perpetual crisis creates a specific sociology of associated problems. It is this challenge that guides this report. Specifically, this report diagnoses this critical issue through the lens of the metropolitan youth of one municipality, Murcia, located on the Spanish Mediterranean side of a peripheral region of the European Union, in the South of Europe.
This report is written from a discipline, sociology, for which “youth” is a problematic category (like old age or any other of the “stages of life”), and by this it is meant to warn that it does not adopt it immediately or spontaneously but submits it to critical reflection. Perhaps before agreeing with Pierre Bourdieu, that youth is indeed a word with no sociological meaning, we must point out that with such an affirmation (however radical it may seem), what is really meant is that sociologically it is more accurate to speak of “youths”.
There is not just one type of youth, unless we are willing to define youth as an average (if such a reductionism were statistically possible), but this is not the theoretical criterion guiding this research.
The heterogeneity of youth groups and the plurality of youth experiences is a sociological criterion.
Experiences of youth are a relevant sociological criterion and it is the framework from which this research has been conceived. The generational category – the young – must be crossed with variables of position in the social space in terms of their socio-economic resources, educational qualifications and cultural resources, sociability and symbolic resources.
In this way, when we talk about “current youth”, what we are actually talking about, is about the different ways of living youth in contemporary societies.
In order to do so, it is necessary to investigate their multiple relationships, taking into account the historical, social and political context and taking into account the conditions of social class, gender, ethno-national origin, level of schooling, level of schooling, place of residence and religious affiliation, among others.
Objectives of the report
The main objective of this research is to carry out a diagnosis of the situation of the young living in the municipality of Murcia. Based on this general objective, the following specific objectives are established:
– To analyse the way in which socio-demographic variables such as age, gender, ethnic origin, social class and place of residence condition the situation of the young population;
– To broaden the knowledge available on the situation of young people in specific areas such as health (with special attention to mental health), gender relations, employment and training, leisure and culture or social and political participation;
– To know the impact of the health crisis caused by Covid-19 on the young population and, especially in the areas identified in the previous specific objective; and,
– To study the expectations, aspirations, needs and demands of the young population.
