Social Stratification and Youth Subcultures after 1989 (from dissidents to workers)
Social Stratification and Youth Subcultures after 1989 (from dissidents to workers)

Summary/Abstract: Youth subcultures (which, in this particular case, are defined by music and style) have the potential to erase or sharpen the distinctions between class, ethnicity and gender. They could also be understood as units of adolescent problem-solving and as specific forms of resistance. This research focuses on the changing group identity of the “informal” youth in Bulgaria, which is shaped by the controversy between old (pre-1989) and new (post-1989) ideas of the West. The main object of research is the street subculture punks, which includes two generational units – that of those born before 1989 and the generation of the 90s. The main task of the research is to capture the identity change in the symbolic system of the examined subculture caused by a period of rapid social change and instability. I draw most of the evidence from fieldwork done among groups of young adults united by a common style and shared values and gathered together through a bold network of useful and friendly contacts. Recent labor migration of my respondents to Western countries directed the research toward combining two fieldwork sites. The first one was in Sofia in 2007 and the second in London and South East (UK), where some of the network’s members live as migrant workers.

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