Critical reflections on youth and equality in the rural context

Abstract

The last two decades have seen a significant growth of research studies concerned with young people living in rural places with a strong focus on social and economic inequalities. In these studies, equality has become a key organising principle in understanding young people's lives in settings that offer continuous social, economic, and cultural disadvantages. Drawing on a qualitative research study in a rural school in Victoria, Australia, this paper seeks to examine the ways in which young people make sense of and negotiate the challenges they encounter in their communities and in their post-secondary school transitions through two dominant discourses of equality: liberal egalitarianism an..