School of Social and Political Science

Description

Young people are experiencing their transition to adulthood in an era of rising inequality, unprecedented new risks and the ubiquitous saturation but ever-evolving role of digital technologies in their lives. 

Marketing themselves as suited to the consumption and financial practices of young people, fintech – for instance, BNPL, crypto, gambling and share trading apps - are a key example of the shift to credit itself as a consumer good and the financialisation of everyday life. 

Forms of debt and fintech have become a normalised feature of young people’s lives that they need to reflexively navigate. The intersection between the frontstage consumption of credit and the backstage data-fied processes of algorithmic evaluation and sorting of access to financial instruments is where inequalities will be shaped in the future, that is, who can access the means to financial and credit services that are central to creating a future. This is especially important for policy makers and youth sector workers as not all future fintech access will be equal. 

Traditional understandings of financial ‘literacy’ and ‘capability’ based on rational choice perspectives are therefore not adequate to explain the emotional and financial considerations in young people’s lives. 

Policy makers and the youth sector therefore need to consider the ‘everydayness’ of fintech beyond the moral panics that situate young people as being duped or irresponsible, especially as the cost-of-living crises and labour market precarity make many of the markers of adulthood of previous generations luxuries only the privileged can now access or afford.

About the speaker

Steven Threadgold is Associate Professor of Sociology the Director of the Newcastle Youth Studies Centre at University of Newcastle, Australia. His research focuses on youth and class, with particular interests in unequal and alternative work and career trajectories; underground and independent creative scenes; cultural formations of taste, and financial practices. Steve an Associate Editor of Journal of Youth Studies, and on the Editorial Boards of The Sociological Review, DIY, Alternative Culture & Society, and Journal of Applied Youth Studies. His latest book is Bourdieu and Affect: Towards a Theory of Affective Affinities (Bristol University Press). Youth, Class and Everyday Struggles (Routledge) won the 2020 Raewyn Connell Prize for best first book in Australian sociology. His latest edited collection with Jessica Gerrard is Class in Australia.