ABSTRACT
We have entered a new era in British youth research. The theoretically and methodologically innovative youth cultural studies tradition of the seventies was overtaken in the eighties by sobering descriptions and analyses of the nature and social consequences of youth unemployment; we now find ourselves on the threshold of structural changes which have implications for ‘youth’ as a social concept and for young people as a social category-at least potentially. Demographic shift, technological and economic change, and the reorganization of education and training provision are shifting and modifying the regulatory mechanisms of youth transitions. It remains a moot point as to whether and in what ways young people’s values and attitudes to their lives and futures are similarly showing signs of shift; and, if so, whether such changes independently contribute to or are primarily a consequence of structural changes.
