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15
LIFESTYLES OF KALININGRAD YOUTH
S. I. Poliakov
National Research University
Higher School of Economics, St. Petersburg
16 Soyuz Pechatnikov ul., St. Petersburg, 190121, Russia
Received 02.06.2022
doi: 10.5922/2079-8555-2022-3-7
© Poliakov, S. I., 2022
Based on an analysis of leisure and consumer practices of students of two leading Kaliningrad universities, this paper attempts to reconstruct the actual space of Kaliningrad youth lifestyles, as well as to identify and describe groups following these lifestyles in socio-economic and demographic terms. Five style groups are identified: the party people who prefer to spend their free time in bars and clubs; the hipsters who frequent theatres and lecture halls, whilst being staunch upholders of the consumerist culture promoted via social media; the 'normal'young people choosing physical exercise and standard weekend leisure activities; the young adults combining Soviet leisure heritage with creative and do-it-yourself practices; the homebodies opting for stay-at-home entertainment. Drawing on the discussion about the significance of lifestyle for modern society, the author concludes that lifestyles do not replace the usual socioeconomic stratification markers, and their capacity to differentiate youth groups with unequal access to economic and cultural resources of youth is also limited. Youth leisure lifestyles form an independent system of stratification, which partially coincides with existing social boundaries and partially overlaps with them. The main dividing line runs between the young people who can afford to choose from a 'supermarket of styles' and those deprived of such an opportunity.
Keywords:
Kaliningrad youth, lifestyles, leisure, consumption Introduction
The way you dress, the food you eat, the music you listen to, the movies you watch, and the way you spend your free time can tell a lot about your financial status, your education background, and your position in the social hierarchy. The concept of lifestyle captures this connection of consumer and leisure practices with the processes of social differentiation [1 — 3].
Youth has always been a problematic, elusive subject of both class and status analysis. On the one hand, young people's lifestyles bear the imprint of their background and the milieu in which they developed as individuals. On the other hand, as a period of a certain moratorium on growing up, youth significantly weakens — if not eliminates — the influence of socio-economic factors in the choice of consumption and leisure time strategies.
To cite this article: Poliakov, S. I. 2022, Lifestyles of Kaliningrad youth, Balt. Reg., Vol. 14, no 3, p. 129 — 144. doi: 10.5922/2079-8555-2022-3-7.
BALTIC REGION ► 2022 ► Vol.14 ► №3
The social and cultural dynamics of the postmodern add even more nuance to this contradictory image. Proliferation of information and communication structures [4], increased global mobility [5], the dominance of unorganized capitalism with an emphasis on service and creative industries [6], the growing influence of cultural industries [7], widespread aestheticization of everyday life [6], increasing risks and growing uncertainty at all levels of social being [8; 9] lead to increasingly individualized lifestyles that are less tied to social class, professional status or neighbourhood [8; 10]. Young people are at the head of this process, since today's young men and women, as a rule, acquire new consumer competencies and are socialized in the consumer society earlier than their predecessors [11].
The aim of this article is to describe the space of lifestyles of modern Kaliningrad city youth and to understand to what extent the style differentiation can be explained by their socio-demographic characteristics. The research summarizes the results of the survey of undergraduate students of Kaliningrad higher educational institutions conducted by researchers from the Youth Research Centre at the National Research University Higher School of Economics (St. Petersburg) in September 2021 and March 2022 1.
Youth Lifestyle: Theoretical Aspect and Empirical Measurement
Max Weber connects the way of life to the status aspect of social stratification. A specific lifestyle is maintained by and expected from those who wish to belong to a certain status group and have access to status privileges [1]. According to Pierre Bourdieu, lifestyle is formed on the basis of habitus, reflecting the position of the subject in the social space, and depends on the volume and structure of its capital (economic, cultural, social, symbolic) [2]. Bourdieu defines lifestyle as 'a unitary set of distinctive preferences which express the same expressive intention' [2, p. 28 — 29]. The sociologist emphasizes the relative nature of this category: 'each lifestyle can only really be constructed in relation to the other, which is its objective and subjective negation' [2, p. 41]. In his approach, Bourdieu's claims to understand the role of culture and education in the reproduction of the class structure of society.
Feminist and postcolonial studies that emphasize — along with social class and status — the importance of gender, race, and ethnicity in shaping lifestyles are an important complement to the concepts mentioned above [12 — 17].
In the context of sociological reflection on the postmodern, there has been a revision of the very concept of lifestyle. It has come to mean the material expres-
1 The survey was conducted by Evgeniya Kuziner, junior researcher at the HSE Center for Media Studies; Dmitry Omelchenko, analyst at the HSE Center for Media Studies; and Sviatoslav Poliakov, researcher at the HSE Center for Media Studies.
sion of individual identity, which is relatively freely chosen in a 'supermarket of styles' and can be contrasted with the traditional way of life rooted in class/ professional/territorial structures [10]. According to Giddens, 'a lifestyle can be defined as a more or less integrated set of practices which an individual embraces, not only because such practices fulfil utilitarian needs, but because they give material form to a particular narrative of self-identity' [9, p. 81]. As Chaney puts it, 'the social phenomenon of lifestyles has been an integral feature of the development of modernity, not least in the idea that lifestyles are a particularly significant representation of the quest for individual identity that is also such a defining characteristic of modernity' [10, p. 158]. The distinctive features of postmodern lifestyles are considered to be fragmented, bricolage, the combination of the previously uncombinable, the mixing of aesthetic principles and tastes, and the blurring of borders between mass and elite culture [18—20].
When studying the cultural practices of young people, the notion of lifestyle is proposed by the representatives of the post-subcultural approach as an alternative to the notion of subculture, the latter being closely related to structural neo-Marxist paradigms of cultural research [11; 21; 22]. The proponents of this idea believe that the term 'lifestyle' better reflects the flexible, fluid, unstable and individualistic nature of actual youth identities based on consumption and leisure than theoretical constructs that assume a strict determinism of social structure. As Beck notes, young people in a risk society construct their lifestyles relatively freely, acquiring self-sufficiency skills and organizing life as an 'open process' [23]. According to Chaney, young people construct identities on their own, not by falling back on the existing communities built around class, neighbourhood, ethnicity, or race, but by joining style communities whose display of membership is the sensitive use of cultural resources for internal contexts and shared meanings [10]. Stephen Miles also emphasizes that the term lifestyle is preferable to subculture because 'young people use their lifestyle to navigate the structural and cultural dilemmas of social change' [11, p. 159].
Nevertheless, the idea that adherence to individualized lifestyles is gradually turning into a universal principle of social differentiation has drawn some reasonable criticism [24; 25]. Thus, Roberts, considering the style groups addressed to in literature, notes that they all exist within the traditional social classes, and invariably include representatives of only two classes — the middle and upper [24]. Thus, while acknowledging that, as a phenomenon, lifestyle does exist, Roberts concludes that it is limited to relatively well-off and highly educated people with the cultural and economic resources to sustain it.
A peculiarity of the Russian academic discourse on youth lifestyles is the broad understanding of this term. The idea of lifestyle is not exclusively limited to consumption and leisure practices, but is a kind of totality that reflects a view on life as a whole [26]. It manifests itself in the choice of employment strategies
and career paths [27 — 29], in the selection of sexual and marriage scenarios [30], in planning one's time and budget [31], in the attitude to health [32] and the environment [33], and so on.
Empirical research of the everyday life of Russian youth has highlighted a number of important trends, which I will outline in brief. Firstly, territorial inequalities play an important role in structuring the space of youth lifestyles. Large differences in lifestyles are observed in cities with advanced cultural and consumer infrastructure, which act as centres of consumption. Social inertia is strong in small towns and villages: young people are more similar to their parents in terms of consumer behaviour and way of spending leisure time than to their urban peers, while elements of urban lifestyles are selectively adopted [34—36]. Regional specifics also play an important role. For example, because Kaliningrad is an exclave region that has its own port and is located close to major European cultural and consumer centres, it is logical to expect that its youth will be more closely integrated into the global (i.e., Western) consumer culture than from their peers from the Russian hinterland. Secondly, the choice of lifestyle depends on the preferred cultural strategy based on communicative practices (progressive, advanced vs. normal, ordinary) [26; 37]. Thirdly, gender is no less (and sometimes even more) significant in the formation of actual youth styles than social class [38; 39]. The choice of style happens in close connection with the construction of gender identities. Finally, the very inclusion of young people in various cultural scenes and solidarity can act as an important predictor of their cultural consumption [40—42].
Design and Methods
The study is based on a survey of 707 students of higher educational institutions in Kaliningrad. As the research subject is a certain social group (students pursuing their bachelor's, specialist and master's degrees) the sample representative of the general population was replaced by the target sample to study its characteristics in statistical indicators. In Kaliningrad, the students of the Immanuel Kant Baltic Federal University and the Kaliningrad State Technical University participated in the study. Necessary and sufficient number of student groups were randomly selected within the following academic fields: 1) mathematics and natural sciences; 2) engineering, technological and technical sciences; 3) social sciences; 4) education and pedagogical sciences; 5) the humanities; 6) healthcare and medical sciences. A continuous survey was conducted in these groups. Calculation of the necessary and sufficient sample quotas for each subset was carried out relative to the data provided by the participating universities on the total number of students pursuing the above-mentioned degree in the selected fields. Thus,
to a great extent, the sample reflects regional specifics. The final distribution of respondents by quotas is shown in Tables 1, 2. Compared to the original survey design, the final result demonstrated a bias towards engineering and technical majors, so the sample was weighted.
Table 1
Distribution of the sample by education level (N = 707)
Level Total, people Total, %
Bachelor 484 68.5
Master 108 15.2
Specialist 115 16.3
Table 2
Distribution of the sample by academic field (N = 707)
Academic field Total, people Total, %
Mathematics and natural sciences 81 11.4
Engineering, technological and technical sciences 335 47.4
Healthcare and medical sciences 55 7.8
Social sciences 134 18.9
Education and pedagogical sciences 48 6.8
Humanities 54 7.6
Of those surveyed, 404 (56.7 %) came from the city of Kaliningrad and the Kaliningrad region, the others came from other federal subjects of Russia, the countries of the Commonwealth of Independent States, or from other countries. The male/female ratio was 55.5 % to 44.5 %, respectively. At the time the survey was conducted, 531 of those surveyed were studying at the government's expense, 159 were financing their education, and 13 were receiving conditional regional or industrial sponsorship. More than half of the students in the survey (64.4 %) had at least one parent who had completed higher education, and the share of those who came from families where both parents had completed higher education was about 35 %. About 45 % of the respondents reported being in a romantic relationship, about 39 % said they were single, and a further 6 % were married.
In assessing their financial means and that of their families, 38.5 % of those surveyed picked the answer 'We can buy new clothes and shoes, but do not always have enough money for necessary household appliances', while 22.7 % responded that they could only occasionally buy clothes and shoes, but did not always have enough money for necessary household appliances. Approximately
14 % of respondents indicated that they could occasionally afford new clothes and shoes, and 7.5 % noted that they can only afford food and basic necessities. Extreme values of the scale ('We do not have enough money even for food' and 'We can buy anything we want') were chosen by 2.2 % and 5.4 % of those surveyed, respectively. At the same time, 9 % found the question difficult to answer.
The general logic of the study corresponds to the design of Roshchina's research project [43] and lies in: 1) constructing the space of youth styles by identifying stable complexes of leisure and consumer practices, 2) identifying groups of young people who are carriers of these styles, 3) identifying socio-economic determinants of the choice of a lifestyle.
To construct the space of youth styles we used 71 variables2 which reflected the frequency of visiting leisure facilities, regularity and intensity of doing sports, choice of hobbies, eating habits, clothing style preferences, consumption of alcoholic beverages and tobacco products. At this stage, the task was to single out complexes of interconnected leisure and consumer practices, each characterizing a certain integral principle of organization of everyday life, a view of life as a whole. This was accomplished by factor analysis (Varimax rotation)3, which made it possible to identify latent variables corresponding to lifestyles. Since one part of the data was represented by dichotomous variables and another part by ordinal variables, a polychoric correlation matrix4 was calculated to build the factor model. The interpretation of the factors was based on both research intuition and the data presented in the academic literature on the lifestyle trends of the Russian youth.
Factor values were used in cluster analysis (k-means method)5 to identify clusters (groups) of lifestyle carriers. Attribution of lifestyles was made based on the maximum values of the centroids of the obtained clusters. Further, we built contingency tables and conducted a series of chi-squared tests and Fisher's exact tests to identify the relationship of style group membership with the socio-demographic characteristics of those surveyed (gender, parental education, residency status, marital status, subjective evaluation of financial status). The significance of these factors for specific style groups was analyzed by examining
2 We had to drop three variables, namely, consumption of fast fashion garments, adherence to glamorous style, and watching TV as a hobby. Fast fashion and TV-viewership were too highly correlated with the other variables, while glamorous style had uniqueness close to one.
3 Factor analysis was carried out with the use of software packages 'psych', 'corrplot', 'ggpolt2' within R software environment for statistical computing.
4 The matrix was calculated with software package 'polycor' within R software environment.
5 Cluster analysis used the software packages 'cluster', 'ClusterR' within the R software environment.
standardized residuals. To identify the determinants influencing the belonging-ness to a style group, the regression analysis method was used. Because the dependent variable was categorical with five gradations, multinomial regression was applied6.
Results Lifestyles
Factor analysis identified 10 latent variables, collectively explaining 38.8 % of the variance (see Appendix 1, Factor Loadings).
The first factor, sports, combined fifteen variables that characterize young people in terms of the frequency with which they engage in various sports activities. Here we accounted for both competitive sports (winter sports, water sports, swimming, running, soccer, competitive dancing, gymnastics, car racing and motor sports) and practices related to an active lifestyle (skating, street workouts, parkour, cycling). Moreover, visiting saunas and bathhouses was also included in this factor, as it is a typical recreational activity for athletes.
The second factor, partying, reflects the intensity of consumption of alcoholic beverages and tobacco products, as well as the frequency of visits to pubs and nightclubs. Interestingly, the factor came to include almost all of the most commonly consumed types of alcohol — both those associated with younger groups (like beer or light cocktails) and those typical for older groups (like vodka or brandy) [44; 45]. It is also noteworthy that young smokers who admitted to using cigarettes also used other tobacco products, like hookahs or vapes.
The third factor, culture and education, is associated with visits to theatres, libraries, lectures, concerts of classical and popular music, standup comedy shows, creative spaces, and yoga classes.
The fourth factor (staying in) combines various leisure practices, which are realized in the space of one's house/apartment. The main load here is taken on by computer games, listening to music, watching TV-shows and surfing the Internet. Along with these, the factor includes such variables, as playing board games, reading anime, reading books, learning foreign languages, and coding.
The fifth factor posed some problems for interpretation. Most of the practices it combines are labelled as 'feminine' in popular perception (going shopping, doing beauty routines, cooking). In addition, the factor includes such hobbies as travel and photography. We assumed that the latent variable characterizes the commitment to the lifestyles popularized on the Instagram and similar social media.
6 Multinomial regression was calculated using the software package 'nnet' within the R software environment.
The sixth factor, casual, includes a standardized set of the most typical leisure activities (going out to cafés, shopping malls and movie theatres, attending live sporting events), which are associated with the lifestyle of 'normal' youth. Preference for casual clothing style also indicates that here we are dealing with a certain expression of 'normativity'.
The seventh factor (creative) combines leisure practices related to creativity and do-it-yourself activities (making handmade crafts, designing, doing art, drawing, doing DIY and blogging). These are all productive, serious leisure activities [46] that require considerable time and have great potential in terms of further professionalization.
We labelled the eighth factor 'Soviet-like' since it expresses an orientation toward forms of leisure time inherited from the Soviet (pre-Internet) era: military tactical games, adventure tourism, collecting, gardening, and horticulture.
The ninth factor (fitness) is very similar to the first. It has to do with the practices of keeping fit, including joining gyms and sports facilities, taking fitness classes, and maintaining a healthy diet.
The tenth factor includes only three variables denoting adherence to 'exotic' gastronomic behaviours: veganism, Indian cuisine, halal and kashrut. We excluded this factor from further analysis, as it contributes very little to the variance (about 1.5 %) and characterizes a very narrow aspect of lifestyle.
Lifestyle groups
Through cluster analysis (K-means method), we correlated the identified lifestyles with the groups of young people (carriers of lifestyles) and obtained six clusters (see Table 3).
Table 3
Values of the centroid of clusters for various lifestyle groups
Factor Cluster
No style 'Party People' Hipsters 'Young Adults' 'Normal youth' 'Homebodies'
Sports - 0.1002 - 0.2043 - 0.3063 - 0.0603 0.4095 0.1402
Partying - 0.4917 1.3246 0.2428 - 0.2859 - 0.4908 0.0650
Culture and Education - 0.0552 0.2233 0.4005 0.1702 - 0.1843 - 0.3595
Staying in - 0.5810 - 0.4309 0.2406 0.2245 - 0.3165 1.5753
Instagram - 0.2149 - 0.5149 1.6110 0.3512 - 0.1073 - 0.5642
Casual - 0.3984 - 0.0637 0.2340 0.1051 0.3644 - 0.0163
Creative - 0.2584 0.2474 - 0.6509 2.0606 - 0.2918 - 0.2092
Fitness - 0.7580 0.2392 0.0274 - 0.4119 1.1511 - 0.2906
Soviet-like 0.0108 - 0.3088 0.0895 0.4441 0.0046 - 0.0602
As in Roschina's study, the most numerous 'No style' cluster (25,8 %) was the one that showed extremely low values for almost all factors. We are talking about young people who are barely included in the indicated leisure and consumer activities and are not the bearers of any lifestyle7.
The second cluster (16.2 % of those surveyed) — 'party people' — is characterized by frequent visits to bars and clubs (several times a week and more often), as well as by intensive consumption of alcoholic beverages (several times a month or more) and tobacco products (several times a week or more).
The third style group shows maximum values for two factors at once: culture and education and Instagram. The mosaic and eclectic lifestyle that emerged at their intersection is very postmodern in nature. The young people included in this group are active in the consumption of both conventionally highbrow and mass culture products, both in attending repertory theatres and classical music concerts, and in shopping, grooming, travelling, cooking, and photography. This group, hipsters, accounted for about 13 % of all surveyed students.
The fourth cluster is characterized, on the one hand, by continuity in relation to 'parental' leisure culture, and, on the other, by an interest in creative and DIY practices8. We can assume that here we are dealing with symbolic emancipation from youth as a period of some kind of idleness and irresponsibility, and a desire to associate with more mature forms of spending time. This is the smallest group, which includes only 10 % of respondents, was labelled young adults in our classification.
The fifth style group (20.8 %) includes young people who show the greatest commitment to a 'standard', or 'normal' lifestyle, which is complemented by an orientation toward sports and fitness practices that serve as a means of building a 'normal' healthy body. Young people in this group engage in sports activities and/or visit sports facilities at least several times a week. We will refer to this group as 'normal' youth. It is noteworthy that in the relational space of lifestyles the antagonist group for the 'normal' youth is not the 'advanced' hipsters, but the 'party people' (the minimum value for the party factor). Obviously, the main distinction here is based on the principle of adherence to / rejection of the so-called 'healthy lifestyle'.
Finally, the sixth cluster, encompassing 14.7 % of those surveyed, brings together those who enjoy home entertainment, or homebodies. Homebodies tend to distance themselves as far as possible from extroverted forms of leisure time
7 We do not label this group 'passive' as suggested by Roschina's because of the term's negative connotations.
8 The combination of DIY-ethos and Soviet rhetoric can be found in real-life youth communities, for example, among some political activists [48] and among the adepts of historical reconstruction [49].
associated with culture and education and Instagram lifestyles. They demonstrate a low frequency of attendance at cultural and educational events, as well as a lack of interest in travel.
Socio-economic and demographic characteristics of lifestyle groups
Tables of correlation of the membership variable in style groups with the variables of gender, financial status, marital status, residence, education of both parents and background show the differences of the selected groups according to socio-economic and demographic parameters (See Appendix 2, Socio-demo-graphic characteristics of lifestyle groups). The gender variable is relevant for hipsters and homebodies. Among hipsters, there is a significant predominance of women, which is easy to explain, since most of the activities collected in the Instagram cluster are labelled as specifically 'female' in popular culture. In addition, women, as other studies have shown, are most active in attending cultural events that have the highest cultural-educational load [47]. Among the adherents of home leisure activities, on the contrary, the dominance of men is noticeable. A closer look shows that this advantage is provided by activities online — interest in videogames, surfing the Internet and coding — as well as reading. The proportion of youth who rated their material well-being as the lowest was also expected to be higher among those who had no identifiable lifestyle. Among young adults, the share of those who continue to live with their parents was significantly lower, an interesting feature suggestive of the desire to emancipate themselves from parental control, and as a result, the wish to spend as much time away from home as possible. In addition, having a relationship/partner/being married also has a negative impact on involvement in home leisure practices.
The variables of gender, financial well-being, parental education, and background were included in the regression model. Of the two highly correlated variables, 'Who do you live with?' (on your own/with parents/with a partner) and 'Your marital status' (married, in a relationship but unmarried/single with no partner), residence was the strongest predictor. The proportion of married youth in the sample is insignificant, and the fact of living together and running a shared household is more important for lifestyle choices than simply having a partner. Here, too, the combined effect of the predictors of residence and gender on the dependent variable is tested. Research confirms that patterns of the traditional gender division of labour are often activated in the context of shared household management. Young people who do not adhere to any lifestyle were chosen as the base group; the coefficients of the regression model, in this case, show the influence of the parameter on the probability of belonging to any of the designated lifestyle groups.
The results of the regression analysis are presented in Table 4. As one can see, the strongest predictor is the level of income, but its differentiating function is manifested with varying strength. For party people, young adults, and 'normal' youth, all levels are significant against the baseline ('Not enough money for food'). At the same time, for young adults, the values of standardized coefficients are approximately equal among young people with income higher than basic, and in the case of party people and 'normal' youth, the coefficients are highest for young people who claim they can afford to buy whatever they want. As for the hipsters, the chances of getting into this style group are higher for young people with the highest level of affluence. For homebodies, the factor of wealth was insignificant. The parental education variable did not resonate with any of the style groups. We can assume that the parental home, while remaining an important source of financial support, is no longer a priority environment for the formation of cultural tastes and consumer competencies.
While the contingency table for the style group membership variable with the gender variable indicated a significant relationship among at least two lifestyle groups (hipsters and homebodies), the regression model only showed an interactive effect between gender and residency: women living with partners were more likely to be hipsters than men with the same residency status. Living with or without a partner was the only significant factor for homebodies. Singles were more likely to be in this style group.
Table 4
Standardized multinomial regression coefficients (Pseudo- R square = 0.1125, p < 0.05)
Determinant 'Party People' Hipsters 'Young Adults' 'Normal youth' Homebodies
(Intercept) - 13.717** - 2.325** - 14.264** - 17.850** - 1.019
Male - 1.001 - 1.023 0.094 1.434** 0.703
I live with my parents - 0.953 - 0.028 0.423 0.553 - 0.732
I live with a partner - 1.114 - 0.314 - 0.367 0.8021 - 2.038**
All the money goes only for food and necessities 12.248** - 0.503 13.025** 16.198** - 1.702
I can occasionally buy clothes and shoes 13.315** 0.608 12.616** 15.557** 0.048
I/We can buy new clothes and shoes but do
not always have enough money for the necessary appliances 13.449** 0.807 13.326** 16.3** 0.285
The end of the Table 4
Determinant 'Party Peopl' Hipsters 'Young Adults' 'Normal youth' Homebodies
I/We can afford almost anything except for big purchases such as a car, an apartment, etc. 13.999** 1.299 13.464** 16.998* 0.716
I/We can buy anything we want 15.717** 2.763** 13.726** 18.1803** 1.830
One of the parents has completed higher education 0.087 0.717 - 0.068 0.546 - 0.031
Originally from Kaliningrad 0.716 0.943 0.669 0.0944 - 0.032
Male: living with parents 1.175 - 0.799 - 1.576 - 1.089 1.307
Male: living with a partner 1.680 - 15.040** - 0.034 - 0.714 1.810
Note: * — 5% significance level, ** — 1% significance level of coefficients.
Discussion and conclusion
The space of lifestyles of Kaliningrad youth is diversified, which corresponds to the cultural and consumer dynamics of big cities and megacities. Nine main lifestyles have been identified, explaining about 40 % of the leisure and consumer diversity: sports, partying, cultural and educational, staying in, 'Soviet-like', creative, fitness, Instagram, and casual. We also identified groups of young people who are carriers of one or more styles: party people — partying; young adults — 'Soviet-like' and creative; 'normal' youth — casual, sports, fitness; hipsters — culture and education and Instagram. Such factors as the level of income and cohabitation turned out to be significant for the differentiation of lifestyles, while the factor of parental education turned out to be irrelevant in the constructed model. A quarter of young people do not adhere to an identifiable lifestyle and show low activity in both consumption and leisure time. The core of this group is the youth living below the poverty line.
We were also able to identify two important axes that structure the relational space of youth lifestyles. First is the commitment to a healthy lifestyle, which serves as a watershed between 'normal' youth and party people — two styles that are poorly differentiated in terms of income. Second is the difference between those forms of leisure that are realized in public space and at home. At one end, there are hipsters and party people, and at the other, homebodies.
In the case of homebodies, the effect of the intersection of different social and demographic categories is interesting. On the one hand, domestic leisure activities are the most frugal, not requiring significant financial investments and therefore open to young people of all incomes. A necessary prerequisite, however, is
the availability of free time as such. Obviously, in the situation of living together (and managing a shared household), young people will have less free time. At the same time, descriptive statistics shows that this style characterizes the consumer and leisure behaviour of men. One can cautiously assume that this indicates a gender disproportion in the distribution of household duties, which is typical for Russian households [50].
The research was funded by the Russian Science Foundation according to the research project "The choice of life strategies by talented young people and their role in enhancing the competitiveness of Russian regions as a response to global challenges of the 'brain drain'" (№21-18-00122).
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The author
Sviatoslav I. Poliakov, M.A., Research Fellow, Centre for Youth Research, National Research University Higher School of Economics, St. Petersburg, Russia. E-mail: spoliakov@hse.ru https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0652-6364
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