Interrogating race, unsettling whiteness: concepts of transitions, enterprise and mobilities in Australian youth studies

Abstract

This paper interrogates how three key concepts in youth studies–‘transitions’, ‘the enterprising self’ and ‘mobilities’–have historically centred the experiences of white/Anglo young people in the Australian settler colonial context. A race critical analysis of these major concepts that foregrounds colonialism, racialised migration schemes, multicultural policies and everyday racism has yet to be applied in any substantial way. This approach has the potential to unsettle the colonial and racialised logics inherent within these concepts and examine how they normalise whiteness in Australia. In exploring how these concepts are predominantly applied, critiqued and engaged with, we ask, how does youth studies as a field reproduce Northern colonial systems of knowledge production? We demonstrate the necessity of naming race, racism and processes of racialisation explicitly within the Australian field, not merely to include ‘others’ but to investigate how dominant conceptual paradigms produce racialised and minoritised Others and mainstream whiteness.