ABSTRACT
Youth and young adulthood are phases in the lifecourse that involve significant changes as new statuses are negotiated and old ones abandoned. Ties of dependency to the family weaken or take new forms and young people gain new freedoms and are expected to accept greater responsibilities. The study of transitions from youth to adulthood has long formed an important theme in youth studies; some would argue to its detriment (e.g. Cohen and Ainley, 2000). Moreover, there is a general acceptance that transitions from education to work, from dependence to independence and from co-residence with parents or carers to co-residence with partners or friends or to solo living has become much more protracted as changes that once occurred in the late teens or early twenties are now frequently delayed until the late twenties or thirties. Indeed, for some this protraction cannot be understood within the parameters of youth but forces us to recognise a new phase in the lifecourse variously referred to as young adulthood (EGRIS, 2001) or emerging adulthood (Arnett, 2004). Transitions have also become much more complex and are frequently non-linear (Furlong et al., 2003). Whereas traditional sequences often involved a move from education to work, followed by leaving home and then marriage and family formation, today these events may occur in irregular sequences. Young people may leave education for work, only to return to education on later occasions. While young people may leave the parental home for education, employment or to move in with a partner, moves are frequently reversed, sometimes on several occasions (Jones, 1995). These complex, non-linear, patterns have earned the description of yo-yo transitions (EGRIS, 2001), while some have suggested that for many, in the absence of anything resembling fixed states, the whole idea of transition may be irrelevant (Furlong, 2015). For social scientists, youth and young adulthood are especially important and interesting phases of the life course because it is here that we can explore and understand the ways in which inequalities are reproduced across generations. Given that we live in societies that are constantly changing, at times undergoing very significant and rapid transformations, the focus on youth and young adulthood often provides an opportunity to understand the ways in which the lives of a generation are being transformed (Woodman and Wyn, 2006) and gives us a vantage point on which we can observe the emergence of new trends and social transformations.
