Affective economies of loneliness in school: bullying, violence, and undesirable social connections

Abstract

Loneliness has become a global health priority, and young people are widely considered the loneliest age group in Australia. Schools are a significant space where young people build social connections, and recent research shows a connection between bullying and loneliness in young people. While the connection between bullying and loneliness has an intuitive quality, the nature of the relationship and the impact of the emotional experience of school on loneliness in young people is underexplored. This project was co-designed with young people in South Australia to generate rich qualitative insights into the experience of loneliness in school. This paper draws on Bourdieu’s habitus, field, and symbolic violence to examine the social dynamics within schools that impact young people’s emotional (affective) experiences. The presence of undesirable social connections (i.e. bullies) in schools emerged as a significant theme in participants’ experiences of loneliness in school. We argue that investigating loneliness as a kind of emotional harm produced through social systems (i.e. affective violence) reveals the importance of undesirable social connections and the circulation of emotions in schools. Schools, therefore, can be understood as lonely spaces produced by the emotional context and the presence of undesirable social connections.