Affiliation:
1. Department of Geography and Earth Sciences, Brunei University, Kingston Lane, Uxbridge, Middlesex UB8 3PH, England
Abstract
In recent years in the UK there has been a great expansion in the number of young people travelling to Third World countries between school and university in order to participate as volunteers on structured gap year projects. Travel to such places is commonly perceived as ‘risky’, and takes young people outside the protective cocoon of UK health and safety legislation. One of the functions played by the providers of gap year projects is to mediate risk. On the basis of analysis of promotional literature, interviews with organisers of gap year projects, and focus groups of returned volunteers, in this paper I argue that the various strategies of risk mediation undertaken by gap year providers serve to reconcile modernising tendencies in UK society toward risk control and structure with postmodern inclinations towards individualisation and uncertainty.
Subject
Environmental Science (miscellaneous),Geography, Planning and Development
Cited by
41 articles.
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