‘Heading for Japan’: Prospective narratives and development among young people living in residential care

Abstract

Young people who live in residential homes provided by Child Protection Services generally have less favourable life conditions and poorer future prospects than young people in general. Repeated interviews with twelve young persons in residential care brought to attention how their prospective narratives are efficacious and significant for developmental processes. The ideas these youths hold about the future are conditioned by both discourses of development and ideas of what adolescence should lead to, their personal history and the context in which the stories are created and told. Studying these narratives shows how narratives of the future are intertwined with the sense of present being. It illuminates the dynamics between the present and the future and exceeds our understanding of development as a linear track from past to present to future. It also shows how residential care both restricts and gives opportunities for some narratives to be told and interpreted. This approach to studying development may be fruitful in understanding why some youths in residential care manage to overcome adversity while others continue to suffer from it.

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