Imagining the Future in New York and London

An Outline of the Project
The purpose of this comparative ethnographic (case study) research project is to explore the themes of imagined futures, aspiration and transitions into adulthood in the everyday lives of high school leavers in New York City and London.

Building on my existing research into age and social identity, here I present new theoretical perspectives on how the future is figured as part of the experience of schooling in relation to other closely connected concepts, including age, identity and aspiration. By conducting long-term, engaged ethnographic research with secondary/high school students and school leavers the research provides a rich comparative portrayal of the everyday practices through which students entering into the ‘adult’ world make sense of their impending futures. Put simply, I explore the the questions ‘what do you want to be when you grow up?’ and 'What do you think you'll do next?', before unravelling the complex discourses and narratives that influence not only the nature of these questions and the possible answers they yield, but also the lived reality of what students might end up ‘being’ when they leave school.

This promises to be a challenging and enriching project that will shine a light on the complex realities of what it means to 'come of age' in the public/state education systems of these two cities. I hope to ask probing questions about the role of schooling as part of developing a real sense of purposeful, meaningful existence for young people in contemporary society. I will be digging much deeper into why students hold certain aspirations for the future, where these ideas come from, and what challenges or barriers might prevent these dreams from becoming reality.

These questions are made even more salient by the future-gazing contexts of the cities in which they are formed: for many, London and New York represent imagined landscapes where futures are made. For the students in the research, the precarity of their imagined futures is made ever-more present by their experiences of urban contexts where social and economic advantage lives cheek-by-jowl with considerable disadvantage – where imagined futures are as much elusive as they may be illusory. Importantly, I intend to consider both the commonalities and the differences and in how age, aspiration and the future are imagined in these similar but also quite unique urban cultural contexts for schooling. While we might think that life in school is very similar in the UK and the US, I anticipate that I will find some very interesting and unusual differences in how schooling shapes the aspirations and worldviews of young people in these cities.

In considering these issues, I identify emerging examples of student agency in achieving aspirations (their ability to strategically shape their own futures, as individuals) as well as local and global structural barriers to these aspirations (such as socio-economic disadvantage). I will also interrogate the social, economic and political discourses that underpin the notions of aspiration (of futurity) that students are presented with in school (for example, going to college, getting a job, being a 'productive' member of society, etc).  I'm therefore interested in the conditions, both individual and social, that lead to choices about future trajectories, whether in education or into other economic or professional fields. I am also interested in how student choices for the future are represented, both in popular and political discourse, the school context.

Finally, I explore examples of how best to facilitate and foster agency at the institutional and discursive level in order to assist students in developing and fulfilling their aspirations. Throughout the project I will use the novel, inter-connected concepts of ‘age imaginaries’ and ‘quantum personhood’ (see elsewhere in this blog) in order to get purchase on what ‘the future’ means, both as a term of analysis and as impending reality to the students involved in the research.

The intended outcome of this project is a series of publicly accessible publications that will help to engage political and popular debate, as well as further academic research, around these important themes. I intend to actively engage students and teachers in the research project and to encourage dialogue between participants at the US and UK research schools so that students and teachers alike may learn something about one another's lives. I also intend that the research project will provide for some students an avenue for developing a clearer sense of agency in pursuing particular aspirations for the future.

This project is funded by the US-UK Fulbright Commission and the Peabody Trust in the UK.