Youth and social change in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union

Two decades have now passed since the revolutions of 1989 swept through Eastern Europe and precipitated the collapse of state socialism across the region, engendering a period of massive social, economic and political transformation. Despite the end-of-history rhetoric surrounding the subsequent 'transitions' from state socialism to democracy and neo-liberal capitalism, all of the countries in the region - from those which have experienced a spiral of economic decline and political uncertainty to those which have now acceded to the European Union - remain in a state of transformation. In this special issue, we wish to explore the ways in which young people growing up in post-socialist Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union negotiate a range of identities and transitions in their personal lives against a backdrop of thoroughgoing transformation in their societies. A number of the articles contained in the issue, and the idea for the special issue itself, stem from a conference held at St. Antony's College, the University of Oxford, in March 2009, which drew together emerging and established scholars from a wide variety of disciplinary backgrounds and with a diverse range of country specialisms.1 Although the geographical and thematic scope of the conference cannot be replicated here, we feel that the group of countries and topics addressed by the special issue nevertheless reflects many of the key developments and divergences emerging across the region, as well as the range of freedoms and insecurities that have accompanied neo-liberal transformation and begun to re-shape different aspects of young people's lives. In addition, while 'social change' is a central theme of the issue, all of the articles in the collection indicate that the new opportunities and risks faced by young people - in spheres as diverse as consumption, migration, political participation, volunteering, employment and family formation - continue both to underpin and to be shaped by familiar social and spatial divisions, not only within and between the countries addressed, but also between 'East' and 'West'. This introduction begins by outlining the ways in which changes taking place in the lives of young people in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union have been theorised to date, and proceeds to outline the key themes explored by the individual contributions. © 2010 Taylor & Francis.