The study’s qualitative focus group methodology conducted with community youth was extended from previous research (Lowe 2008) in Alaska Peninsula and Aleutian Island communities. The former study examined socioeconomic impacts of a rationalization program in Bering Sea crab fisheries. Although the primary focus of the Bering Sea research was documenting the experience of local fishermen affected by restricted access management programs, focus groups were also conducted with teenagers in the region’s coastal communities to obtain their perspective on how they envisioned their futures. The current research was conducted to extend this aspect of the Aleutian study’s methodology down the coast to further explore preliminary assumptions that emerged from the former study regarding Alaska coastal youth current occupational choices and affinities, new expectations regarding higher education, and community in- and out-migration.
A structured focus group interview protocol of 30 questions was administered between 2008–2011 with groups of high school students and groups of 18–24 year old youth. See Additional file 1 for interview questions. Focus group interview questions were designed to help youth describe their lifestyle today and how they view future opportunities in work, education, or training. In the author’s current research among Alaska’s youth, the focus group approach has proved to be an effective way to access some initial dimensions of local youth culture. (Ervin 2005) notes how for applied anthropologists, the method affords them flexibility in the absence of funding or time for full scale ethnography and that it additionally produces a substantial amount of information (2005:175). Participants included secondary-level students (age 16–18) and post-secondary level (age 18–24) informants. Secondary level students were stratified into two groups, “junior” or third year secondary level students and “senior” or fourth year secondary level students. Secondary-level students were recruited through community schools. Post-secondary level informants were recruited through high school guidance counselor offices, announcements posted in the community, and by convenience samples. All minors (under the age of 18) included had a consent form signed by their parents allowing children to participate. Participants over the age of 18 signed assent forms. The focus group methodology usually limits group size to 8–12 participants (Krueger 1988) and youth were selected by a random draw of permission forms to fill three group interviews conducted in each of the five communities. Focus group interviews were recorded with a digital recorder. They were transcribed and subjected to content analysis using Atlas ti qualitative data analysis software. Codes were derived from the topic of each of the interview questions: i.e. positive and negative attributes associated with community life, academic opportunities and constraints, leisure pursuits, aspirations for the future and particularly occupational goals, and community in- and out-migration. Descriptive statistical functions in SPSS were used to analyze questionnaire data and the occupational ranking data collected. Participants were administered a brief questionnaire of 9 questions attending to age, gender, ethnicity, education level, residence patterns, and parent occupation. They were also asked to rank a list of 20 occupations in order from most appealing to least appealing.
“Close-Knit” Communities
When asked to describe unique qualities of their communities during the group interviews, Alaska coastal youth first overwhelmingly commented on and agreed about the close interconnectedness between residents of their home communities and an associated collective connection to the place of those communities. In many instances, youth described their communities as “close-knit” and how this particular attribute distinguishes their communities from others. Describing social relations as “close-knit” signifies the traditional social capital shared between community members based on strong social ties and networks extending from the family, place-based attachments, and various forms of social control.
I think Sitka is a lot more socially
close-knit
than anywhere else in the state.
–Sitka High School Senior
Well, we’re all kind of
close-knit
, that’s a good thing, I guess.
–Ouzinkie High School Senior
Plus that we’re so
close-knit
that when someone dies, there’s a huge connection--we all get together…so that’s good.
–Petersburg High School Senior
The interesting thing about Craig is that is a
close-knit
community, considering the diversity of people. Everyone knows everyone. Everyone knows me.
–Craig 18–24 year old
In their extensive study among rural youth in Scotland, Glendinning et al. (2003) describe this sentiment as common to today’s northern rural youth, once again tied to the attachment to family and other locally based social relations, the community’s natural environment, and feelings of safety associated with the home area. Scottish youth also used the exact phrase “close-knit” to describe the social cohesiveness characteristic of their communities as did Skaptadóttir’s (1996) female informants of remote Icelandic fishing communities.
The deep social ties participants described in the group interviews are first grounded in enculturation experiences centered in extended family structures and multiple generations, coalescing around a coastal and commercial fishing lifestyle. Coastal youth understand the isolation of their communities is what draws them together and the common upbringing during their childhood. In most of the communities, respondents remarked on the feelings of safety they experience at home among family members and other community residents. Family is also the conduit through which coastal youth experience and learn to appreciate the beauty of their natural environment by participating in outdoor activities in the course of family life and their childhood, eventually extending to outings with friends. For all the respondents but chiefly the youngest, the very important local outdoor activities such as subsistence fishing and hunting were conducted among family members over others.
It just kind of seems like a family activity. Everybody gets on the boat or goes to the dock or whatever you do, and you grab the fishing poles and sit there and cast and you just kind of sit there and listen to old music.
–Sitka High School Senior
Participants also described the beauty of their physical environment as another positive community attribute and as essential to their own feelings about home. Many of these activities were described as fondly experienced within the family first, particularly those associated with subsistence fishing and hunting. They described a wide range of these activities that include both subsistencec and recreational pursuits.
The thing about Sitka I like is that it is on an island. So you would think that there isn’t that much to do here, but the amount of things you can do outside—whether it is subsistence fishing or hunting--the opportunities are just overwhelming. You could spend a lifetime and not get everything done here.
–Sitka High School Senior
Youth were asked if they saw themselves raising their own families in their home communities in the future. The response was positive in all the study communities, particularly for the early years of a child’s life in which they engaged in these family activities, and which they themselves treasured as a central element to their own identities. Alaska coastal youth interviewed for this study expressed ambivalence about whether or not rural communities are necessarily good places for adolescents to live, however. Once Alaska focus group participants’ imagined future children reaching their own current ages, there was more indecision among them about whether or not remaining in the home communities would be beneficial to their children. They described forces of social control as another defining aspect of the close-knit nature of their communities; that gossip in particular was a powerful weapon in constraining their behavior and shaping their self-esteem. In all the Alaska study communities, youth commented on the dangers of earning a reputation for a careless or stupid act; a reputation that would forever be associated with one’s name.
Participants’ indecision about the benefits of coastal community life for adolescents was also influenced by a concern about boredom and bad weather linked to drug and alcohol abuse for some and by a lack of access to wider opportunities for others. Respondents fully recognized the advantages and disadvantages of the isolation of their home communities.
I think it was a good place to grow up because I basically lived in the outdoors, but, I mean, the wintertimes, you know, for the kids now there’s temptation for alcohol and drug abuse here because there’s nothing to do in the wintertime.
-Kodiak 18 to 24 year old
The ambivalent feelings participants had about both the advantages and disadvantages of living in a small coastal community were eventually framed within a discussion of whether or not young people would pursue traditional and local occupations or broaden their opportunities by pursuing higher education outside of these communities. Most of the study participants were facing and living important life decisions at the time of these interviews which they also approached with some ambivalence, i.e. their occupational and educational paths, and whether or not they would leave or stay in their home communities. Their narratives revealed this tension between expressed cultural affinities for small town living and self-directed, hands-on work and the equally strong desire for the enticements of getting a college education, perhaps leaving the community and re-settling elsewhere, and experiencing a life perceived as more cosmopolitan.
“Hands-On” People
The practical knowledge and multiple skills Alaska coastal residents require for survival in a harsh environment with limited economic opportunities emerged in discussions of employment preferences for study participants. Alaska coastal youth collectively expressed a preference for physical or self-directed employment, often noting their affinities for “hands-on” work now and in the future.
“Gotta work with your hands more”
I would want to be one of them [Mechanic/Welder or Construction Worker] because they’re somewhat high paying and it’s a
hands-on
job and something that you could maybe make something for yourself, or fix your own car or something.
-Ouzinkie High School Senior
But if I were to really pick something that I’m passionate about, probably a teacher. Something that’s more
hands-on.
–Sitka 18 to 24 year old
What they allow us to do in culinary arts class is pretty cool, you get
hands-on.
–Kodiak High School Senior
Participants were asked to rank a list of 20 occupations available to them in their communities; an activity that was followed by a group discussion about those rankings. Study participants expressed this “hands-on” orientation and an affinity for self-directed and vocational work over “white collar” or professional occupations. In analysis, the data were stratified by the group as a whole, by community, by gender, by ethnicity, and by sub-region. For the group as a whole, findings demonstrate a cultural affinity toward “hands-on”, self-directed and vocational work such as air pilotingd, being a small business owner, culinary arts, and skilled trades over more office bound occupations. Table 2 shows the average ranking for each occupation. The answer choice with the largest average ranking is the most preferred choice for the group as a whole, for the male participants, and for the female participants.e
Table 2
Weighted average occupational ranking, all, women, men
“I don’t like the idea of sitting at a desk all day”.
Occupations with lower ranks were associated with a lack of personal power or tedious and/or associated with outsiders and their values, including: office work, fish processing and tourism related jobs. Coastal youth do not see themselves working in occupations in which they are required to sit at a desk in an office as they describe themselves as active, outdoorsy, and again, “hands-on”.
I like to be outdoors, I don’t really want to be in an office.
–Ouzinkie 18 to 24 year old
I just don’t want something that’s boring. I want something that’s new and interesting. I don’t know, I just see myself sitting in a cubicle or something and that’s so unappealing to me. I want to be in charge of my days beyond an office.
-Sitka 18 to 24 year old
As my worst, I picked office worker because I can’t stand being stuck inside. That would drive me AWOL.
-Kodiak 18 to 24 year old
More monotony in those jobs…I am not a fan of just sitting at a desk.
-Craig 18 to 24 year old
I don’t think it would be fun to sit in a cubicle all day. -Petersburg High School Senior
Because it’s kind of like at school, you’re always sitting down, so, I mean, when you’re fishing or something you’re using your hands.
-Kodiak High School Junior
Entry level opportunities in traditional, hands-on occupations in many coastal communities such as fishing are diminishing, however, and expectations for young people in rural Alaska to pursue higher education are increasing. The preferences expressed in the quotations above are necessarily at odds with increasing expectations for coastal youth to attend college where the focus is on training for professional, and arguably desk bound occupations. Corbett describes this new cultural expectation for youth to eventually leave their communities manifesting as a “migration imperative” for his informants in Nova Scotia; how “formal education and leaving the community of origin, or ‘getting out’ was understood as an ethical and even moral responsibility” (Corbett 2007a:431).
Alaska focus group discussions did demonstrate how going to college has now become a logical life path for Alaska youth despite some underlying questions about the actual practical utility of a college education. Coastal youth feel pressure to go to college from parents, friends’ parents, and teachers. In many cases, study participants will be first generation college students in their families although some participants’ parents had attended college but had not finished. Few parents of interviewed youth had college degrees; a fact which highlights how different today’s coastal youth choices are from those of their parents:
Neither of my parents went to college so they really want me to go but there isn’t like a decided thing that I should do, it’s really up to me. But they want me to go, they want to help me as much as they can.
-Petersburg High School Senior
A lot of pressure to go to college, just because my family struggles so much with money and it seems, like, all the time, we’re trying to find another way to get more for this or that. So, I get a lot of pressure to go to college and be able to get a really good job and, you know, be really stable, and just do better is basically a roundabout way of saying it - it’s just to do better.
-Sitka High School Junior
My dad has been working labor intensive jobs since he was very young…and he wants to make sure that I don’t do the same thing with my life. He wants me to go to college or get some sort of white collar job. So I won’t be throwing out my back at age 30 like he did.
-Sitka High School Seniors
Focus group discussions demonstrate how coastal youth are encouraged by their elders to pursue a path towards “useful”, “promising”, or stable, high paying careers such as in engineering and health care— whether or not the young person has an interest in or adequate academic preparation for those fields. One high school junior explained how he was interested in pursuing an engineering degree in the future and how he had already selected an engineering school a relative was attending outside Alaska. Later in the interview, however, we discovered this particular student did not like math nor did he like working with computers. Although he was focused on engineering as a career path, he seemed to be unclear about what engineers do. Overall, this youth’s narrative was reflective of a shared, vague perception of the future among Alaska coastal youth interviewed for this study and in some cases, inadequate guidance in understanding options for post-secondary education or training for what are now numerous first generation college students. Participants discussed how adults encouraged them toward “useful” paths of study or “promising fields”:
When I graduated, nursing was huge. I am going to school for nursing right now and everyone constantly tells you that it’s a great field to go into. Whereas I have a friend going into interior design and here, people are like, interior design, what are you going to do with that? There are so many houses here in town. But I can’t see that person coming back here to live because of the choice that they make. That person is going to have to go down south and find something to do.
-Petersburg 18 to 24 year old
-The only person in my family that went to college was my mom. So they are kind of like, if you are going to go to college or get a job, make sure it is in something useful. So nothing like art, which I am really into. So they want me to do something like become a nurse, but all of my friends want me to do art. So there is that kind of pressure.
-My parents just want me to do something that is useful. They want it to be their money’s worth with college.
-Yeah, neither of my parents went to college and my dad thinks it is a really stupid idea, so they are kind of like if you go to college you better make it useful.
-Sitka High School Seniors
“Girls usually go off to college. Guys stay here and fish or do other things”.
Any exodus out of rural Alaska communities towards higher education is being definitively led by the young women of those communities, reflecting both a growing national gender gap in higher education and a pronounced trend in Alaska (Kleinfeld and Andrews 2006). In the Alaska occupation ranking exercise (see Table 2), there were gendered differences in responses when young men awarded higher ranks to occupations such as fishing and mechanics and when they were vociferous in their opinions about the inherent value of these occupations. Within the group discussion, the opinions of young women were overshadowed by those of their male peers who particularly mocked any discussion pertaining to what was conceived of as more feminine occupations such as hairdressing (though technically a “hands-on” occupation), demonstrating the well-documented “macho complex” (Orbach 1977) characteristic of men in fishing societies. Women privately ranked occupations in art trades or in health care and teaching higher. Some of the young women did note that hairdressing is a viable way to make a living for women in fishing communities and more congruent with family life than either fishing or fish processing. The Alaska focus group discussions also reinforced possible reasons for increased female flight from Alaska’s rural communities, i.e. strong gender stratification and traditionally defined gender roles limiting employment opportunities for women at home (Corbett 2007a); constraints perhaps unacceptable to some of today’s young women who understand there are other options for them outside of their rural communities.
-More girls go to college, a lot of guys drop out of high school.
-I think a lot of guys see the fishing business as very profitable and you don’t need any kind of education with that. A lot of guys hop on a fishing boat in the summer rather than get ready for college, versus girls.
-Sitka High School Seniors
A lot of the girls in our classes did go to school and they did do at least something - they have got some sort of degree. Whether they will use it or not because they came back—probably not. But the boys, they go to school and they all come back.
-Petersburg 18 to 24 year old
I don’t know what the population is, but I am guessing that there are a lot more males my age then females my age. It is just not a place where females want to be. They don’t come here for any reason. And then one thing I see is if you are a single guy, your choices are girls with kids. There are a lot of females my age, but they have problems, like drinking problems or drug problems and for a single guy who is looking for a girlfriend it is not a good place to look.
-Craig 18 to 24 year old
Outsiders in Alaska coastal communities
Paradoxically, whereas factors indicative of the globalization of fishing and processing industries are influencing out-migration of youth and particularly, young women, globalization processes also result in increasing in-migration of outsiders to coastal Alaska communities, particularly in association with the expansion of the processing and tourism industries. Study participants were quite clear in their general disdain for the occupation of fish processing because of first, the low pay and poor working conditions, but also primarily because they now associate this work with transnational labor and foreigners in their communities. Fish processing has never been particularly culturally congruent with local Alaska lifeways and has been dominated by outside entities from the industry’s beginnings in the state. The current aversion to processing work is, however, a reflection of what is now a generation of changes in the industry. Local fishing families used to work in the processing plants in Alaska and many other northern places—particularly women and young people. However, this participation has changed as northern fisheries became more globalized in the 1970s with the establishment of Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZs). In Alaska, a gradual “Americanization” of Alaska’s fisheries was achieved through the 1980s, when foreign fishing companies were moved out of fishing activities within the U.S. EEZ, but as fish processors were allowed considerable U.S. shoreside investment in processing operations and the ability to bring in their own labor force (Lowe 2008).
No. 24: Yeah, there are a lot of foreigners.
No. 22: I think it’s because they have different work standards and they can get away with a lot of stuff.
No. 21: Yeah, they can work them longer for longer hours, cheaper, and without paying them overtime.
-Sitka 18 to 24 year olds
“I think being a guide is my last choice, because I hate the tourists here, and I have bad thoughts about that”.
Tourism is another coastal industry expanding in many of Alaska’s coastal communities and is a means for communities to diversify their economies. It is, however, an industry locals also associate with outsiders present in the community. Despite grudgingly admitting tourism brings in much needed local revenue, youth interviewed for this study dread a tourism-based future. In general, they dislike the disruption of tourist crowds in the summer and are reluctant to share the uniqueness of their home communities with strangers industry brings in who know very little about Alaska or coastal community residents’ way of life. In the group discussions, youth were particularly unfriendly towards the sport fishing industry whose operators are generally headquartered in places outside of Alaska and who are not considered locals contributing to the viability of Alaska communities. At the time of this research, commercial and charter fishermen in Southeast Alaska were waging an intense battle over allocation rights to dwindling halibut stocks.
Well, charter boats get a really, really bad name in Sitka because almost all of the charter boat operators come in from out of town and then, you know, do their thing, then leave again and take the fish.
-Sitka High School Junior
They are important and everything, but I don’t necessarily like them. Most of the charters are for tourists. Most of the charter boat operators are what I would sort of consider a tourist because they are only here during a couple summer months.
-Craig 18 to 24 year old
Alaska coastal communities and the “real world”
Although Alaska coastal youth are ambivalent about the presence of outsiders in their communities, they were enthusiastic about traveling to other places themselves. Across the study communities, youth commented on how they perceived their isolated communities as distinct from the “real world.” Despite their recognition of being isolated, their interviews also demonstrated they are very much aspiring global citizens, connected to what they do perceive as the “real world” through media and traveling for school functions and during vacations.
I am really excited to leave and go out to the
real world
. But, when you are gone for at least two weeks you get this feeling of wanting to come home. It is your home. It is weird how you can be attracted to such a small place. -Petersburg High School Senior
This will always be home, regardless of where I go, this will always be my home. But it would be nice to get out for a while and try experiencing living life for a couple of years in the
real world
and then probably I’ll eventually miss this place and want to come back. But I don’t know, as long as I visit here, frequently and often, I can probably stand being away from it and living somewhere else.
-Sitka 18 to 24 year old
Interviewer: Would you say that this town was a good town to grow up in?
Number 82: Kind of. You get to know everyone, but I think that if you grew up in a big city, you would have more of an idea of what the rest of the Lower 48 is like.
Number 81: It is really protected here.
Number 86: It is almost not the
real world
to a point.
-Craig High School Juniors
Study participants worry about the disadvantages of living in a remote community, and particularly about their academic preparation as they are now faced with new expectations to attend college. The most noteworthy negative school experience for coastal youth was the lack of diversity and rigor in course offerings at the secondary level. The majority of Alaska rural schools, including several of those the study participants attend, are overwhelmingly plagued with teacher turnover or lack of resources to cover all the subjects students need at once. Students themselves are painfully aware of these issues and express concern about how a school’s lack of offerings might affect them in the future and particularly in lives that might be lived outside of their communities. Improving or standardizing the curriculum in the state’s schools, and particularly in math and science, is a pressing issue for Alaska coastal youth:
There’s not many options. There’s some classes that they call Independent Studies…I’m in a class that a teacher can’t even really help with…there’s a math class and there’s no one person that actually specializes in math.
-Ouzinkie High School Senior
One of the bad things about the school is that the electives are really limited to what the teachers can do. And a lot of the time what happens is that teachers move up here and discover that they don’t like it and move again.
-Craig High School Juniors
We need a different math program. Get us on the same math program that all the other schools around the country are on so we could get into college easily.
-Sitka High School Junior
Formal education becomes an important locus for accessing the world outside of the community. Connection to the “real world” is also achieved through travel with family and travel for sports or other school activities. School related travel provides Alaska coastal youth with opportunities to meet with friends outside their communities and to thereby establish and reinforce connections with other Alaska communities. They also depend on the connections to the “real world” the Internet affords them for shopping, social networking, and taking online courses despite their complaints of internet service being too slow in many communities. Alaska coastal youth want to keep up on the fashions, movies, and electronics crazes, go out to eat in restaurants and drink fancy coffee, and they’d like to have access to services that are “open 24/7” which seemed to be the ultimate mark of modernity. They want to be able to participate in a wide range of sports, arts, and other activities.
“I don’t think people realize that they love it here until they are out of here for a while.”
Youth were asked about their residence plans for the future. Study participants themselves were unclear about their future place of residence or career path, but do know that they need to experience the world outside their home communities. There is a recognition among many of the study participants, particularly among the older, 18 to 24 year olds, that there is no substitute for home and the connections they have to it. Not all participants, therefore, were completely definitive in their plans to move away permanently but rather expressed how they merely needed to try something different for a period of time. They have seen older siblings and peers have those experiences they desire in college or elsewhere, only to return home to coastal Alaska; or conversely, educate themselves out of a job at home preventing them from returning.
Most of the high school students interviewed had plans to leave their home communities, at least in the short term for college. Similar to youth in many places, Alaska coastal youth demonstrate a restlessness and desire for new experiences away from home and look forward to these experiences after high school that now almost always include college or some kind of post-secondary training—even if they don’t actually end up going or if they eventually return within the first year.
My sister went to college last year and she was really excited to live in Seattle, because we weren’t really familiar with the big city and she really liked it at first, but then she started missing it here, just the love and comfort from all of your friends and everyone that knows you. And, not much happens here. There was kind of a lot of crime in Seattle.
-Petersburg High School Junior
My sister (she’s thirty) and my brother in law, they have two kids and they don’t like it down south as much and they want to move up here ‘cause it’s a better environment for raising kids…And you know up here, everyone’s nice so they want to move up here but my brother in law can’t get a job here…He’s an engineer. And my sister had a major in architecture and design.
-Petersburg High School Senior
Number 24: It’s almost like it’s like a fantasy what it’s going to be like on the other side, the grass is going to be greener. But you get down there and you don’t realize that you’re going to be homesick.
Number. 21: Yeah, you miss this place once you get out. I mean, I have travelled and have been gone for months at a time and I really do miss this small town.
Number 22: Well, sometimes living here all your life doesn’t really prepare you for what it’s really going to be like when you’re nobody in some big place.
Number 21: Yeah, nobody knows you.
-Sitka 18 to 24 year olds
“No, I don’t like fishing”.
Alaska youth narratives ultimately demonstrate social change occurring in Alaska coastal communities as a result of globalization processes: the globalization of the fishing industry, changing gender roles, new cultural pressures for youth to acquire higher education, as well as youth desires for new experiences outside their home communities. The gradual move away from inshore, artisanal fishing towards offshore, industrialized and factory production operations in which local fishermen have less of a stake has contributed to the perception of fishing an unattractive vocation for northern, coastal youth (Arbo and Hersoug 1997). Although Alaska youth may afford respect to traditional local vocations such as fishing in the way many coastal residents identify as or with fishermen and their lifestyle (Reedy-Maschner 2010) they might not see themselves pursuing this line of work in the future in the face of numerous barriers to entry in fishing industry occupations and because of hegemonic discourses promoting higher education and disparaging local livelihood strategies. Ambivalence towards fishing as a vocation was a particularly prevalent sentiment among the high school participants whereas the 18–24 year old participants interviewed were either fishermen themselves or still connected to fishing in some way through family and other social relations. In most of the communities, younger participants described how youth would get “stuck” in the fishing lifestyle in which opportunities for advancement were currently minimal considering the barriers to entry for youth, i.e. high cost of quota share.
For the majority of young people interviewed for this study, a career in fishing does seem unlikely. Study participants often spoke about grandfathers who owned the boats and the quota and for whom they’d worked as deckhands exposing these generational changes occurring in the industry and in communities. This social change is often colloquially referred to as the “graying of the fleet” in Alaska (Rosvold 2007; Loring and Harrison 2013). Study participants spoke of fishing in the summer and as a means to make pocket money rather than as a future vocation. Some younger coastal youth also confessed to disliking commercial fishing work.
I fished for a year, I didn’t really like it. I was a fisherman. I just don’t like being that dirty or anything like that.
-Ouzinkie High School Senior
I have just always been fishing since I was a little kid and I have never really liked commercial fishing all that much. I am always on the boat and it has never been something that has interested me.
-Craig High School Junior
Yeah, I don’t want to work on a boat as much. I don’t like fishing as much as everybody else does but I mean, I could live with it but it’s not something I really wanna do at all. -Craig High School Student
Interviewer: And Number 84, you don’t want to be a fisherman either?
No. I don’t like fishing.
Interviewer: Is your family involved in that?
Just my grandpa.
-Craig High School Senior