Prior research has pointed to cross-national variations in media attention for online risks, which are then mirrored in parental concerns regarding the internet. However, little is known so far about how the discursive environment around opportunities and risks of the internet for children shapes the very context in which children’s own perceptions are developed and their online experiences are situated. The aim of this contribution is threefold: (1) to understand how and to what extent children’s perceptions of online risks incorporate media representations, parental worries and discourses circulating among peers; (2) to identify any age- or gender-specific patterns in the appropriation and conversion of media, parents’ and peers’ discourses; and (3) to identify whether there are cross-cultural variations in risk perceptions.

This article focuses on adolescents’ use of anonymous social networking sites (SNSs). Their perceptions and attitudes toward one such platform, Ask.fm, are discussed using the framework of uses and gratifications theory to explore motivations for using it. Four focus groups and four interviews were carried out with 22 Maltese adolescents (10 female and 12 male) aged 11 to 16 years. Thematic analysis of data collected was undertaken to identify and develop themes relevant to Ask.fm use. Findings indicate that the platform is a space where adolescents interact with others as part of their identity exploration. The role of anonymity was salient throughout. Ask.fm users were aware of the risks related to using the site; yet, the possibilities for fun, peer acceptance, and identity exploration may be driving them to experiment with this risky behavior. The implications arising from these exploratory findings may be applicable to other anonymous SNSs.

This article takes a discourse analysis frame to understand how young people’s norms and moral evaluations of their practices on digital media are culturally negotiated between their own and their peers’ experiences, parental concerns, awareness programmes and media representations. It draws on focus groups and interviews with 171 participants aged 13–16 from nine European countries, analysing how young people position themselves towards online experiences, particularly bullying, sexual communication and contact. While teenagers can sympathize with victims of bullying, especially if they perceive them as vulnerable, they can blame older teenagers, girls or parents for initiating or being co-responsible for risks young victims are involved in. They are judged as in failing, when they choose to not comply with self-protection and self-vigilance (Giddens 1991, Dobson and Ringrose 2015, Gill and Scharf 2011), which can be detected in young people’s moral discourses as a successful way of being and behaving online.

Since the late 1990’s unaccompanied minors have crossed the Mediterranean in search of refuge and the possibility of building a viable future, including access to work to support themselves and their families. This paper draws on qualitative research with young asylum seekers who arrived in Malta as unaccompanied minors. It centres their voices to explore how they perceive and navigate their transition to adulthood, with a particular focus on the transition to employment and how this is shaped by legislation, policy, and service provision. Using an interpretative phenomenological approach, semi-structured interviews were conducted with six young people. Participants’ narratives reveal resilience in the face of severe adversity, alongside experiences of being “rescued” into a system experienced as another form of confinement. Their efforts to access work are shaped by a punishing border apparatus that produces ongoing precarity, including unemployment, homelessness, and informal or exploitative labour. In the absence of consistent care and meaningful access to rights, participants are compelled to be self-sufficient while navigating uncertain and constrained pathways into employment. Reconnecting with the critical and creative use of metaphor that has animated scholarship on youth transitions, this paper further develops the metaphorical framework of ‘fugitive transitions’ to understand the experiences of unaccompanied young asylum seekers. In doing so, it challenges established notions of transitions to adulthood that are grounded in assumptions of citizenship and legal belonging. Specifically, we apply this framework to examine transitions into employment, exploring how unaccompanied young asylum seekers navigate precarious pathways to work while negotiating the legal, social, and structural constraints that shape their opportunities and aspirations.