ABSTRACT
Chapter 1 outlined a conceptualization of youth based on a series of “transitions” from childhood to adulthood. These transitions, of course, have changed in pattern over time in terms of the age at which young people attempt to make them and the difficulties they may encounter. The next two chapters describe a number of ways in which social and economic structures which frame youth transitions have been fundamentally transformed in the last quarter of the twentieth century. For the majority of young people in the United Kingdom, the time at which they now leave full-time education, their economic dependency on their parents, and their first moves away from the parental home have all been subject to the influence of economic and social changes which have occurred in the last two decades. These structural shifts have both restructured the nature and meaning of “youth” and significantly reshaped the welfare environment in which young people grow up. The next two chapters focus on the “re-structuration” of youth in the sense that we will examine both the social and economic institutions which frame young people’s lives, and the changing patterns of choices which young people and their families make in responding to the changing world around them. The chapters focus upon the three main transitions outlined in Chapter 1: the schooltowork transition; the relationship between young people and families; and the ways in which both these affect “housing careers” as young people move away from the parental home.
