ABSTRACT
The aim of this chapter is to examine young peopled transitions from education to the labour market, including their plans and strategies for accessing the labour market. Here, the premise is that ‘transitions’ involve multiple processes, which differ according to the socio-economic background of the young person. They have no definite point of arrival. The context of the transitions may be educational failure, institutionalised discrimination and high levels of unemployment (Wyn and White 1997, 95), which may result in “delayed, broken, highly fragmented and blocked transitions” (Chisholm 1993, in Wyn and White 1997, 95). In other words, transitions will rarely comprise ‘linear’ processes, but have become less predictable than in the past, for which the changed and changing labour market can certainly be made responsible to a significant extent. Experiences of steps in the transition process were examined bearing in mind Beck’s (1992) individualisation hypothesis, which makes particular reference to the lives of young people. While Beck’s theories have been criticised on a number of grounds (see, for example, Adams 1995; Dingwall 1999) nevertheless, this chapter uses this perspective heuristically as another potentially useful ankle to analysis.
