Old and young. Shutterstock/Xesal. All rights reserved.In March 2016, the UK-based Guardian newspaper launched a two week series of articles called The Trials of Generation Y, supported by one of the country’s best known social justice research and campaigning organisations, the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust. The purpose of the series was to investigate what the newspaper calls a “perfect storm of factors besetting an entire generation of young adults around the world.”
Drawing on a combination of individual testimonial, statistical analysis and editorial commentary, the series of more than twenty articles sought to trace how, “a combination of debt, joblessness, globalisation, demographics and rising house prices is depressing the incomes and prospects of millions of young people across the developed world, resulting in unprecedented inequality between generations.”
The Trials of Generation Y is the latest in a series of media and policy narratives that have proliferated globally over the last decade and that combine a surface-level rhetoric of expressing concern for the plight of the young with an underlying push to promote business-friendly agendas that serve the interests of economic elites. The youth ruse is simple but alarmingly effective – and even well-meaning, sincere advocates of youth rights and interests can be at risk of falling into its trap if its underlying political project is not identified and analysed clearly.
