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Two prominent themes of the volume are adolescents' transition to adulthood and children's time-use issues. Several chapters address each of these issues, including one examining children's labor in Senegal. Two ethnographic studies are included: one analyzes student-teacher interaction in an urban high-school math class, while the other examines friendship development and maintenance of early elementary-aged African American girls. The volume also includes a policy analysis of medical insurance provision for low income children, and a response to an earlier chapter on children's rights that appeared in Volume 8.

This International Volume of Sociological Studies of Children and Youth shows the breadth of current empirical research that focuses on children and youth around the world. Coming from a range of methodological and theoretical orientations, this volume showcases the lives of children and the policies that shape children's lives on five continents. Across these research articles, it becomes clear that we cannot continue to assume a certain meaning of childhood, because this concept is bound by both cultural and structural factors. Cultural expectations influence how societies view children and how children view themselves. A handful of these studies show how immigrant children and youth provide particularly interesting insight as they navigate more than one cultural context. Structural factors also become salient, as children come from unequal backgrounds, different levels of economic development, and face varying political concerns. While these papers come from different doorsteps of the world, cultural and structural threads of continuity connect them as meaningful for children. This volume illustrates how international childhood researchers can use current concepts and theories into unlikely contexts exposing their limitations and helping to inform more versatile and robust lines of thinking for children and youth studies.

In this volume, guest editor Qvortrup brings together contributions representing structural, historical, and comparative perspectives on the study of children and youth. Here, childhood is conceived as a structural feature of society, subject to the stable and changing forces of the larger social context, and comparable across time and cultures. Such perspectives have been relatively under-represented in the "New Sociology of Childhood," which has tended both to stress children's agency, and to favour ethnographic methods of inquiry. The series editors are pleased to expand and enliven the foci of Sociological Studies of Children and Youth with this volume edited by the internationally renowned Danish Sociologist Jens Qvortrup, the first non-U.S. editor in the series' history.

Aims and objectives: We were interested in group differences in Indonesia in bilingualism, whether vocabulary knowledge shows a differential pattern across the languages, and whether language skill and usage differences between groups are moderated by contextual factors, such as ethnic group size. Data and analysis: We examined group differences in language usage at home and in public, self-reported proficiency, and vocabulary scores in both languages among 632 adolescents (292 males, Mage = 14.57 years) from four ethnic groups in Indonesia (214 Javanese, 115 Batak Toba, 108 Toraja, and 195 Chinese). Differential item functioning analysis was conducted to test whether adolescents had different vocabulary they only know in one language, which would indicate equality or inequality in access to knowledge in the two languages. Findings: There were large differences in language knowledge and usage. The lowest scores in ethnic language vocabulary and usage were found among the Chinese group. Across groups, scores for Bahasa Indonesia (L2) vocabulary were higher than ethnic language (L1) vocabulary. However, the ranking from easy to difficult words was similar across the languages and there were no specific sets of items that were differentially known in any language. Implication: Despite the differences in bilingualism skill and usage, all groups have similar access to different domains of the languages, and L2 (Bahasa Indonesia) seems to have become the dominant language in all groups. Our findings also imply that bilingualism comprises various domains, including language skill, self-reported proficiency, and self-reported usage, and that the associations between these components are not very strong. Originality: We investigated bilingualism among non-immigrant adolescents in an under-researched, non-WEIRD (western, educated, industrialized, rich, democratic) society. The study shows the role of language usage and skill that is different from a western context in various aspects, such as the dominance of L2 in all groups.

Youth delinquency, involving behaviours such as smoking, drinking, and premature sexual misconduct, is an ongoing issue in Southeast Asia. Though both individual governments and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) have implemented regulations to minimise the development of youth delinquency, adolescents' involvement in deviant behaviours continues to rise. Analysing the causes and effects of a variety of youth delinquent behaviours, both digital and conventional, The Socially Constructed and Reproduced Youth Delinquency in Southeast Asia aligns insightful sociological inquiry with an ongoing regional phenomenon. Delving into both the individual and the societal costs of such behaviours, Jason Hung considers their impact on SEA countries' pursuit of sustainable futures. With suggestions for sharpening regional competitiveness and habitability across SEA, each chapter also presents informed policy recommendations for coping with the entrenched, complex problems of youth delinquency efficiently and effectively. With emphasis on advancing positive youth involvement for a more robust future, Hung presents a compelling evocation of the role of adolescents in the creation of a fairer society in Southeast Asia.

This volume of "Sociological Studies of Children and Youth" showcases timely and important work of active, early-career sociologists helping to define the direction of the sub-field. Their work shares basic premises and concerns: children and youth are active agents in their own 'socialization', produce meaning and action collaboratively with peers, and struggle for agency in various social contexts. These themes shape essentially all of the contributions. The volume is organized in two parts. Following the Introduction, six chapters make up Part One, 'Empirical Studies'. Two quantitative analyses lead off: first an examination of residential mobility, peer networks and life-course transitions; second, a look at adolescents' participation in a particular social movement. Two ethnographic studies follow - here the foci are 'Zero Tolerance' school discipline policies, and female athletes' construction of femininity. A comparative content analysis of teen magazine advice columns, and a qualitative study of construction of 'adoptive family' identities, round out Part One. Three chapters constitute Part Two, 'Innovations in Theory and Research Methods'. The first offers an analysis of two films that explore childrens' struggle for agency and control. The next chapter develops a typology of children's participation in social movements, employing fascinating first-person narrative accounts. The final chapter demonstrates the unique ability of group interviews to capture processes through which adolescents accomplish group talk, develop shared perspectives, and construct gender identities.

The focus of attention with regard to "child soldiers" has tended to be
on abducted children or those forced or coerced into fighting. When asked,
however, many children and young people themselves say that they
volunteered. Moreover, when negotiating the Optional Protocol to the
Convention on the Rights of the Child on involvement of children in armed
conflict, some governments claimed the right to continue to recruit
volunteers under the age of 18 and indeed still do so, although others have
raised their minimum age for recruitment.

Abstract This study investigated processes by which adolescents form positive evaluations of their peer groups. One‐hundred and fifteen male and female adolescents aged 14–15 years made a series of comparisons between their own peer group (the ingroup) and a group of which they were not a member (the outgroup). In line with the predictions of social identity theory (Tajfel and Turner, 1979), participants behaved consistently in ways which favoured the ingroup: compared to the outgroup, the ingroup was associated to a greater extent with positive characteristics (e.g. being fun, nice, and honest) and to a lesser extent with negative characteristics (e.g. being ignorant, unfriendly, and boring). Their responses were also related to levels of identification with the ingroup: at higher levels of identification participants reported more favourable evaluations of their groups. These findings extend earlier research and show how the benefits derived from group membership in adolescence are in part realised through intergroup processes.

It is argued that egalitarian principles apply to temporal stages of lives as well as to complete lives. Norman Daniels's theory of justice between age groups (eg, see Am I My Parents' Keeper?, Oxford: Oxford U Press, 1988) is criticized, & two alternative theories are suggested: the first objects to inequality during people's lives even if the inequality is compensated for in terms of complete lives, & the second applies an egalitarian notion of priority to the contents of people's lives rather than to the overall quality of their complete lives. Modified AA