Voiceless: the 'Gen Y' discourse in Australia

In the early 1950s Karl Mannheim gave form to generational theorising. He asserted that those born within a similar time period experience 'the same concrete historical problems' (Mannheim 1952: 304). By the end of the 1990s, Wyn and White (1997) had raised concerns about the ways in which generational labels might 'trivialise' or 'distort' the heterogeneity of young people's experiences and the danger of this for policy development. In spite of such cautionary calls, strikingly homogenous generational discourses have significant, seemingly immutable purchase in the public domain today. This paper argues that the din provided by the ‘Generation Y’ discourse in Australia, focussing specifically on the themes of 'awareness', 'independent dependency' and 'impatience' fails to provide a vehicle for understanding the lived experiences and life chances of a host of young Australians. Our concern is that with so much noise, there are a great many whose voices are not heard and whose needs are consequently overlooked.