Resistant Life-World at the Threshold of Youth: Studying the Formation Process of Exceeding Expectations in Young Adults

In all historical periods, special types and forms of concerns have appeared for young people at the community level. With changes in social structures and occasions, not only these concerns, but also their meanings for young people undergo changes and transformations. Social and economic conditions, technological progress, emergence of numerous fields of study and new specializations, and lengthening of the period of education at the beginning of the 20th century have created a context in need of special attention to be paid to the youth period. Some theorists have considered youth to be full of excitement and enthusiasm with many tensions and pressures. Adolescents face changes and transformations that cause swings in their behaviors and feelings, besides encountering contradictions in their feelings and physiological and hormonal stimulations. Accordingly, the youth period is a difficult and conflicting period of life. Young people face physical, psychological, and cognitive changes in their behaviors in addition to undergoing general changes. There is a lot of pressure and worry in the youth period because  young persons show some kinds of reaction to natural changes and developments during this exciting period. Many behavioral and social deviations of people start from this period and become more stable and difficult to be modified with aging. Parents’ information about psychological, social, maturity, and adolescence characteristics can create a suitable relationship between them and the young people. In this research, by examining different backgrounds, some sensitive concepts were selected for acquiring a theoretical sensitivity. The first concept was the life-world. It is clear that the life of young people redefines their life-worlds in an interaction with their expectations. Therefore, their actions for building their life-worlds in the research field were investigated by designing the related interview protocol. The concept of value had a similar role and the relevant questions were asked based on the interview protocol. Social relations and the formation of expectations were other sensitive concepts that were emphasized by the researchers. Physical and body issues were also focused on and the issue of family support was emphasized as well. Finally, the reactions and activities were put into focus so that the outcomes of the processes could be better studied.

This research was based on qualitative methodology and the grounded theory approach (systematic method). Coding was done via an open, axial, and selective coding method. The data were collected from the newly arrived young students at Yazd University, who were aged 18-19 years. It was tried to conduct the interviews in different places, including green spaces, university campus, student dormitories, and the like. Durations of the interviews varied between 30 minutes to 1 hour and 45 minutes. There were 20 participants, from among whom 10 and 9 students were respectively boys and girls and 1 person was transgender. The necessary criteria to achieve the research validity and reliability were also obtained.

Discussion of Results & Conclusion:

The findings were presented in 12 main categories, including value generation gap, problematic family support, limitation on life-world, humiliating comparison, multiple expectations, and dare normalization. The core category was increasing expectations/resilient life-word. Then, the paradigmatic model and substantive theory were presented. The results indicated that the increasing expectations turned the youth from passive subjects to social and resistant subjects. Iran is experiencing complex values, as well as attitudinal and behavioral processes and developments. In this process, young people have a very prominent role. They are the ones, who are exposed to discourse processes and the discourse order makes them passive subjects; Thus, this process seems to have not been very successful. It is taken for granted that discourse subjects not only pass through the discourse order, but also try to create increasing expectations at the boundaries of discourse. In fact, many of these developments and processes are followed by younger generations. The life-words of young people, especially those on the threshold of youth, are accompanied by increasing expectations and an active resistance in defense of everyday life. This fact has changed them from passive subjects to social and resistant subjects. Indeed, the needs of young people are not limited to food, clothing, and housing nowadays; rather, they play their own special roles with the complexity of different needs. They do not get enough attention and reversely face multiple limitations in their lives in the fields of commuting, communication with friends, and entertainment, as well as restrictions in choosing a field of study and employment, etc. In their mental worlds, an epistemological revolution has occurred, while their activism and subjectivity have become radical in the backyard of social realities and in the context of the society. They experience scenes of resistance, while living in the boundaries of discourse. Ignoring or suppressing this situation will have no results other than creating a deeper gap in epistemological developments and internal revolutions.