This edited collection, Critical Youth Studies for the 21st Century, addresses questions regarding youth transition, the influence of government and globalisation on youth activity and identity, and the ‘othering’ of youths in contemporary youth studies. It encourages readers to consider the lens through which young people are viewed. Each section (which Peter Kelly and Annelies Kamp term a ‘gathering’) highlights global contributions to the construction of youth problems. Chapters focus on a local or methodological issue with universal implications, going beyond usual considerations of media and social norms as causal factors of youth-related orthodoxies.

The first ‘gathering’ begins with the social construction of youth, highlighting the consequences of economic and social shifts on schooling, employment and independence, and encouraging reflection on the disconnect between expectations for youths and the opportunities available to them. Chapters by Kamp, and by Geraldine Scanlon, Michael Shelvin and Conor McGukin, for instance, highlight the challenges faced by teenage mothers and youths with a disability, revealing reduced choices and expectations for education. This gathering gently nudges the reader to consider the impacts of the language and frames of reference we use to describe the developmental process.

The second ‘gathering’ shifts the focus to the formal social consequences of youth transitions from childhood to adulthood. It considers the impact of laws and regulations, social inequalities and broader discourses regarding the activities considered to be the domain of youth. This ‘gathering’ is arguably the least balanced of the book, and its focus on the preconceived falsities of juvenile justice might have taken more of a critical lens to individuality and discretion.

The third ‘gathering’ is more nuanced in its approach to social and individual contributions to the construction of youth identity and culture. Pam Nilan's chapter suggests that in order to understand these complexities, we need to consider youth culture as a fluid assemblage of individual experiences and understandings. Her observations are evident in other chapters in the ‘gathering’, which highlight the challenges of youth identity when religion, race, sexual orientation and youth activity are a part of the daily social conversation. Amelia Johns’s chapter on youth gangs specifically focuses on the assemblage of individual experiences, suggesting that youths have the capacity to move outside the worlds created for them.

Johns encourages the reader to consider the role of youths in their own outcomes, and this is the focus of the fourth ‘gathering’. A chapter by Ann Dadich makes a balanced argument for mixed-methods and youth-led research, cautioning against the notion that youth participatory research is always the best approach. She recommends researchers ensure that all youths are able to participate, that dissenting views are respected and that incentive does not undermine the richness of data. The need for reflection on all of the aspects of critical youth studies, both positive and negative, is an important part of the process.

The last ‘gathering’ of the book presents a range of theoretical and methodological positions on critical youth studies for the twenty-first century, and helps the reader to digest the broad range of examples in the collection. In the final chapter, Peter Kelly suggests that in order to supersede the bureaucracy, institutionalisation and standardisation of youth studies, we must adopt a sociological imagination. Arguably, this is the most salient point in the book. Its inclusion at the end of the volume provides a sense of optimism for the reader, although it might have been signalled earlier.

A Critical Youth Studies for the 21st Century provides the reader with insight into the multiple sources and impacts of the ‘othering’ of youth. Occasionally, this work is less developed critically than it otherwise might have been, although the collection is generally well balanced and argued. Kelly and Kamp have brought together a vital and thought-provoking collection for researchers and practitioners in a number of youth-oriented fields.