ABSTRACT
In both academic and non academic discourses ‘youth’ is often regarded as the stage of life when ‘identity’ becomes a more established and settled socio-psychic state. However, as ‘identity’ itself has become matter of key theoretical and empirical concern in social sciences, a considerable debate has developed as to its proper conceptualisation and the research strategies most appropriate to its investigation. In more systematic terms, the following have usually been identified as constitutive elements of the period of late modernity/postmodernity. The erosion of older and more settled collective identities and the development of new ones - whether nostalgic, regressive re-imaginings or genuinely novel - is thus a central feature of this emergent period of late modernity. Following the work of the psychoanalyst Erik Erikson, for example, it is often asserted that adolescence is a ‘critical’ phase or period in the life course when identity has to be established in order for young people to become ready to assume adult responsibilities.
