Inventing youth wellbeing

Abstract

Calls to address wellbeing are now so commonplace and widespread that they can mean both everything and nothing. Across policy and popular discourses, improving wellbeing is offered as a solution to the myriad issues facing young people today. This chapter explores the invention of youth wellbeing as a concept and a category of concern, noting its ambiguity and changing applications. It introduces a case for defamilarizing the status and truth claims of the construct of youth wellbeing, by exploring its invention as well as its movements and productive effects. Two sets of conceptual resources are outlined for developing this analysis: the first is informed by Somers’ approach to developing ..