ABSTRACT
Many discourses on youth transitions imply a transition that culminates in social inclusion-inclusion as a ‘full’ citizen, having attained all the trappings of so-called ‘adulthood’. However, as this chapter will highlight, this is not always the case. Many young people move through the various phases of transition but do not attain all the expected goals, and certainly not in the time scale or order suggested by most models of youth transition. Although individual young people are increasingly being seen as ‘choosing’ their own transitional pathways, they are still held back by structural constraints: partly, it is argued here, because of discrimination by age and status. This chapter outlines the standard model of transition in relation to disadvantaged young people and draws on the findings from two recent qualitative studies undertaken by the author-one of young people’s experiences of offending (the Offender study) (Barry 2004) and the other of young people’s experiences of growing up (the Transitions study) (Barry 2001a, 2001b, 2002). Both sets of young people (in the age range 15-30 years old) were in the process of reassessing their lives, reshaping their identities and modifying their attitudes in the transition from childhood to adulthood. Both groups experienced disadvantage and poverty in both childhood and youth. And both groups struggled with the potentially discriminatory attitudes and practices of those with whom they came into contact during this critical phase in their lives.
