Abstract
This chapter uses the evolving concept of bounded agency to assist a rethinking of social structures in relation to human aspiration and capacities for change. Empirical encounters with groups of 18- to 25-year-olds in Britain and internationally have formed the basis for extended dialogues between ideas and evidence in the search for new ways of conceptualising youth transitions. These explorations have taken place in contrasting societal contexts over several decades. A life-course framework is increasingly being used to explain youth transitions. The life-course approach understands the life-course as an interrelationship between individuals and society. It evolves “as a time–dependent, dynamic linkage between social structure, institutions and individual action from birth to death” (Heinz, Huinink, Swader, Weymann, General introduction. In Heinz WR, Huinink J, Weymann A (eds) The life course reader: individuals and societies across time. Campus Verlag GmbH, Frankfurt, p 15, 2009). From this standpoint, the chapter develops an analysis of the scope young adults have for fulfilling their aspirations, and how they strive for these aspirations through their work and learning. Asking how system worlds can be better reconciled with the life worlds of young people provides a starting point for debate on how bounds on human strivings and aspirations can be loosened to release creative potential and realise broader and fairer forms of meritocracy.
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- 1.
The evidence on which this argument is based is drawn from a series of UK Research Council Major Awards, EU funded projects and other research carried out at national and international level. I am indebted to the research colleagues and partners with whom I have travelled in these social landscapes over several decades, including Martina Behrens, Peter Rudd, Claire Woolley and Teresa Gouveia, all of whom completed important doctoral theses on youth transitions between 1998 and 2010. Also to the UK Economic and Social Research Council (Awards, particularly L134 251 011) and the ESRC LLAKES Centre programme (Award No RES-139-25-0120); Anglo-German Foundation; British Council; Asia-European Hub on Lifelong Learning (Asia-Europe Foundation); Canadian Government Anglo-Canadian Research Awards; European Commission; Helix Vinn Centre Sweden and a range of Erasmus-Mundus and COMPARE journal collaborations.
- 2.
Dual system in Germany; work-based training and apprenticeships or further education college learning to vocational qualification in Britain.
- 3.
This portrayal and analysis also apparently resonated beyond the English speaking world, given the reproduction of an edited version in the French language journal Lien Social et Politique.
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Acknowledgements
From 2008, further research on youth transitions has been supported through an award that established the UK Economic and Social Research Council’s LLAKES Centre for Learning and Life Chances in Knowledge Economies and Societies. Award RES-594-28-0001 LLAKES (Learning and Life Chances in Knowledge Economies and Societies) has supported the writing of this chapter.
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Evans, K. (2012). Reconciling the System World with the Life Worlds of Young Adults: Where Next for Youth Transition Policies?. In: Billett, S., Johnson, G., Thomas, S., Sim, C., Hay, S., Ryan, J. (eds) Experience of School Transitions. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-4198-0_2
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