Youth welfare work

Chapter five focuses on the development of youth welfare work, in particular the youth club, as a response to concerns that young people were not using their leisure time appropriately. Fred Powell, Martin Geoghegan, Margaret Scanlon and Katharina Swirak highlight how an international volunteer boom in the 1960s, and in the field of youth work in particular, in part reflected changing attitudes to youth and concerns about what seemed a disaffected generation. This chapter assesses developments in youth work at a local and national level, highlighting the impact of international strategies in this field and the tensions between the many players in the Irish scene. It attests to the ways in which external frameworks, emanating from supranational bodies such as the Council of Europe and the United Nations, reframed understandings of youth in the adult imagination and influenced how youth was perceived by voluntary and statutory organisations. It also highlights the ways in which some international ideas and models were embraced but others challenged the status quo, and therefore faced resistance.

Juvenile delinquents?

After the Second World War increased political and economic interconnectedness in the West further promoted the transnational exchange of expertise and ideas of best practice, resulting in the emergence of common frameworks across jurisdictions. This chapter focuses on how religious, civic and official bodies responded to youth in the sixties, giving particular attention to international ideas around youth services and associations. It examines so-called ‘problem youths’. It identifies how debates on juvenile delinquency, which were directly connected with new manifestations of youth culture internationally, featured in an Irish context and explores how these debates contributed to a reframing of what were considered appropriate responses to young offenders and to children and young people who, for a variety of reasons, were housed in residential institutions.

New opportunities, enduring attitudes

JJ Lee has described the generation that came to adulthood in this period as the ‘first in more than a century to have a realistic chance of making a decent living in their own country’. This chapter explores this observation by analysing how structural changes affected youth. It examines the evolution of employment opportunities, assesses changes in patterns of migration and analyses the impact of new developments in second level education, taking into account the role of status in young people’s options and decisions. This chapter asks who benefitted most from the structural changes of the sixties, and who gained the least.

Practical patriots

Chapter one examines the way in which the political classes envisioned the role of youth and identifies how youth featured in broader discourses of societal change. The commemoration of the 1916 Rising on its 50th anniversary provided an opportunity for national stocktaking, and an analysis of how young people featured in commemorative narratives and activities demonstrates the centrality of youth in the idea of an improved economic future. Analysis of the role of youth in the politics of both party and protest reveals the extent to which an international challenge to establishment forces from young people featured in the Republic of Ireland, and demonstrates the limited impact of young people on mainstream politics, despite their significance for economic change.

Introduction

The introduction situates the study within the existing international and national historiographies of the postwar period, the sixties and youth. It indicates the way in which the social category of youth will be used as a lens through which social change and modernization in the Republic of Ireland can be more clearly understood.

Teens ’n’ twenties

While the cinema and the dancehall had entertained generations of Irish youths prior to the sixties, this chapter addresses new manifestations of youth culture in this period, with a particular focus on the showband, beat and folk scenes. This chapter explores how the self-image of young people was informed and shaped by transnational developments in popular culture, which were transmitted through a variety of media and manifested in ways that were significantly affected by local factors. It analyses how a transnational youth culture was adopted and adapted in Ireland and identifies its role in shaping discussions of the sexual lives of young people. Ultimately it highlights how the development of a thriving Irish youth culture undermined previous rhetoric that equated the modern with the foreign, and threats to Irish culture and morality as external.

Conclusion

This study shows that in the post war era the political establishment had been slow to introduce economic and educational expansion, while high levels of youth emigration and rising participation rates in second level education reflected an evolution of expectations from below. It confirms the extensive continuities that prevailed in Irish society, in its politics and values in particular. Hierarchies of power were retained in many areas: middle class youths gained most from structural change; conservative values were slow to change as was the nature of social services; party politics remained as it was. The approach of this study encourages a broader focus when it comes to social change. Examining youth culture, as well as the interaction of religious and civic bodies with international models in youth work, reveals how studies of popular culture and civil society are key conduits in analyses of societal change. It also prevents easy assumptions about Ireland always lagging behind, catching up with or imitating its neighbours in the West. This was true in certain areas, but Irish governments, churches and civil society organisations were often engaged with forums where new ideas about the economy and social services were just being developed. International models would face adaptation of different kinds in different societies.