ABSTRACT
The concept of citizenship potentially provides a way of understanding the life and work transitions of early adulthood. Becoming a citizen can be seen as more than a simple matter of acquiring civil status with accompanying rights and obligations. Citizenship is being rethought as a process through which young adults exercise responsibility and social contribution while having entitlements to support and provisions that enable them to manage their own transitions to adulthood and pursue their own projects. This requires and embraces competence. This approach to citizenship requires us to consider institutional structures that constrain or enable the acquisition of the various forms of knowledge and competence which are necessary to independent existence and social contribution. In spanning the public and private domains of existence, it enables us to address questions of inequality and of status inconsistency at various stages of the life course.
