ABSTRACT
In every field of enquiry there are times when evidence out distances theory, and other periods when theory advances beyond the evidence. British youth research in the late-1990s is in the latter condition. There is broad agreement among the contributors to this volume and, indeed, among youth researchers at large, that over the last 30 years there have been profound changes in the processes whereby young people move from education into the labour market. The crucial changes are described in various ways such as a destructuring of young people’s situations, thereby thrusting them into states of impermanence and ambivalence, from where they are unable to see where they are heading. The destructuring of young people’s situations, assuming for present purposes that such trend has in fact occurred, might have been expected to loosen the determining power of social origins and ascribed statuses over individuals’ destinies but, in case of social class backgrounds at any rate, this has manifestly not happened.
