(Im)mobile Methods? Capturing the complexity of young people's leisure lives in Cross-cultural Context

Abstract

While youth scholars are increasingly cognisant of the global dimensions of youth leisure, there have been few efforts to analyse situated practices and lived meanings across time and space. The research that does exist tends toward quantitative comparison, in which cultural specificities and everyday experiences are minimised. Surprisingly few studies have sought to engage with qualitative approaches in multiple research sites – fewer still have moved beyond Western settings for knowledge-production. Our ongoing ESRC-funded study analyses convergences and divergences in youth leisure between Scotland and Hong Kong, building on and developing landmark social research from the 1960s (Jephcott 1967, 1971). Whilst rooted in these ‘spaces of place’, the methods employed aim to engage with new geographies of power, identity and mobility thrown up by the emergent ‘spaces of flows’ that compose the lived experience of global youth culture. The paper will explore key conceptual and methodological issues involved in conducting qualitative, cross-cultural research on young people’s leisure lives, highlighting the need to blend traditional, place-based methods with imaginative and creative methodological approaches incorporating visual, digital and mobile methods.