ABSTRACT
Focusing on what youth researchers (partly) agree on concerning the debate of the role of agency and structure in young people’s lives, this chapter explores and hopefully demonstrates how the Life Course theoretical principles turned into empirical instruments are able to tackle: (i) the (relative) degree to which individuals attribute the causality or explanation of certain life events to their agency and their structural context in Portugal at the time of the 2008 financial and social crisis (thus situated in a historical time and place); (ii) the relationship of such events with their past and their path to the future (beyond youth), summing up, the relationship with their individual time; and finally (iii) the role of the very calibre of the event in the relative attribution of its causality to agency, structure, and other life course principles in between, particularly of linked lives (one of the theoretical principles of the Life Course Theory). Based on a qualitative follow-up study on how (relatively old) young people adapted and coped with the Portuguese 2008 financial crisis and its ensuing economic and social crisis, using both its design and findings, this chapter aims to show the theoretical, methodological and empirical validity of bridging Life Course Research with the Agency and Structure debate in youth studies.
