ABSTRACT
Education and youth studies Young people spend much of their lives in educational settings, and their experiences in schools, colleges and universities can shape much of their subsequent lives. Inevitably, youth researchers have an established interest in young people’s educational experiences and have been at the forefront of discussions around the impact of changing patterns of participation on the lives of young people. While youth studies is multidisciplinary, research in the area of education has traditionally had a strong sociological focus and
partly shares an agenda with the sociology of education. In youth studies, researchers have tended to focus on four overlapping themes:
• Mobility: education as a stage in the reproduction of inequalities, linked to the transmission of advantage between generations and as a process through which groups of young people may be marginalized.
