Walther, Andreas (ed.) 1996: Junge Erwachsene in Europa - jenseits der Normalbiographie? (Young Adults in Europe - beyond "normal biography"?). Leske+Budrich: Opladen.
Abstracts
More about the topic of "Young adults". List of EGRIS publications.
Andreas Walther's introduction starts from the empirical evidence that there is
an increasing share of young people up to 35 years (or even more) participating in
institutional measures and programmes conceptualized as youth programmes (up to 25
years of age). The history of the last decades of German and European youth research
and youth policies shows that the age limits of youth have been postponed more and more
and that this postponement increasingly has been subject of scientific debates. Behind
these strategies of extension of youth structural changes and problems of social
integration affecting the European societies do appear: integration into the labour
market gets more and more difficult and insecure, periods of education and training are
prolonged, gender relations are irritated by the coincidence of a dissolution and
restructuration of former inequality and life styles stand for coping strategies
between security and experimental life forms. Obviously previous youth research was
stuck to the so-called "normal life course" presupposing the individual solution of
these tasks in the youth stage. In order not to hide the ongoing changes and challenges
of social integration and social exclusion behind the construction of a new social
group "Young Adults", the author suggests to use the concept first of all as an
analytical concept to open new perspectives on growing up and social integration.
Lynne Chisholm takes up the basic question concerning the relation between the
phenomenon "Young Adults" and its social reality. Does the concept "Young Adults" refer
to the extension of the life course by a new life stage as a response to the increased
complexity of planning one's life? Do "Young Adults" stand for a fundamental change in
social integration and adulthood itself? In order to prove the plausibility of the
second hypothesis Chisholm asks why so little attention is paid to the adult life stage
by both research and policy. The contingency of individual biographies is confronted
with the linear structure of institutionalized life courses. Thus, social integration
in general and the life stage of adulthood in particular are affected. "Young Adults"
are considered to be "sociologically more female" as the competence to cope with
contingent life perspectives is developed rather in female than in male transitions
into the adult society.
Sven Morch considers "Young Adults" to be a conceptual instrument by which
social reality is constructed. In this course, he analyses young adults in the sense of
a grown historical phenomenon, which began to develop end of the 18th century. Since
end of the Second World War a popularization and widening of "youth time" has taken
place. Nowadays individuals ,become very early young, very late adult, however". On the
one hand everybody has access to youth, which means that everybody is given the same
starting conditions mainly with regard to education. Modern youth is acting as a
decisive individual and social transformator. On the other hand, young adults
increasingly are under pressure, since only they are made responsible for the results
of their life arrangements. A crucial problem is the so-called Container youth": This
is the group of young adults excluded from the educational society through a system of
special projects "containers" which keep them apart from the labour market and from
social integration. In the future, the concept "Young Adults" should be analysed with
regard to social change on the one hand, but also as transformation period between
childhood and adulthood on the other hand.
José Machado Pais points to the increased reversibility of transitions from
youth to adulthood. This consideration is based on empirical data on juvenile life
conditions and generational relations raised in Portugal. The reversibility of becoming
adult mainly caused by the difficulties of entering and staying in the labour market
creates new values and life forms invading the centre of society from its margins.
Using Turner's concept of dramaturgy of rites this process produces rites of conversion
as well as diversion, social inventions as well as social exclusion. An important
support of young people in this situation is the "welfare family" providing them with
social and financial capital. The reversibility of transitions and the coincidence of
rites of separation without passage (to complete adulthood) with rites of passage
without separation lead to the picture of the "yo-yo-generation".
Els Peters and Manuela du Bois-Reymond develop the same model of
"yo-yo-trajectories" from a Dutch perspective based on empirical data putting the focus
on changed gender relations. The process of social modernization and its effects of
individualization lead to contradictions between the life perspectives of different
generations of women (mothers and daughters) as well as between the life perspectives
of young women and young men. Strategies of transitions are structured by the
dichotomies risks/opportunities and choice/pressure which mainly depend on gender and
education. This "yo-yo-model" is applied to the orientations of young women with regard
to their perceptions and strategies with regard to the combination of work and family.
The authors consider young women to be advantaged in gaining a reflexive biographical
position in comparison to young men as they have to cope with restricted opportunities
on the one side and receive encouraging support from their mothers on the other
side.
Olivier Galland directs his attention to the observation that the relation
between young adults and society is one of mutual exclusion and disapproval. However,
empirical data concerning the situation of education and the labour-market especially
in France lead Galland to a profound modification of this assertion. Thus, due to an
extended and widely used period of education, only a small part of young adults is
concerned by unemployment. Moreover, the majority of educated young adults have good
opportunities in the job market. With regard to the attitude of youth towards their
society, Galland points out that young Europeans feel more integrated and content today
than ten years ago. It is only a minority of young adults for whom both their attitude
and their employment situation have deteriorated at a high degree. Galland draws the
conclusion that society neither is marginalizing young adults nor is being refused by
them. Nevertheless, social polarization has increased: Whereas the majority of young
adults have good opportunities of improving its/their situation, a minority is more and
more confronted with social disintegration.
Hans-Ulrich Müller describes "Young Adults" in the context of the process of
modern individualization as a new life stage which cannot be interpreted as prolonged
youth" in the traditional sense. This life stage is characterized by discontinuities,
since it implies diverse, disparate experiments of coping with life and realization of
interests. This process of trial and error leads to fragile, risky identities mainly
where young adults in big cities are concerned. However, social institutions do not
have adequate instruments by which they can support young adults in coping with life
and actualizing their interests. That is why young adults find themselves in a
structural socio-political vacuum". Therefore, they have to rely on informal networks
of support and on the family of origin. Moreover, they are dependent on communication
and co-operation milieux. This situation requires the development of policies as part
of local social policy being orientated especially to the demands of young adults.
These policies should refer to the general conditions of life and scopes of action.
Moreover, they should take up and include the historically new constitutive elements of
young adulthood.
Andreas Schröer describes the specific life stage of young adults living in
Eastern Germany with regard to the social process of transformation. Young adults
encounter the demands of individualized life courses with a modern form of
collectivity. Social networks are functional inasmuch as they replace missing or
inadequate institutional support. They offer temporal and material security. Moreover,
they constitute a normative frame that provides role models for the construction of
identities. Therefore, the social networks are not only "emergency organizations" but
also relevant elements for the development of life styles. These life styles are
characterized by a high degree of reproductive activities, which are indispensable for
the stabilization and expansion of collective everyday life.
Enzo Morgagni and Luigi Guerra describe the specific forms that the general
structural changes of transition take in Italy, especially in the region
Emilia-Romagna. Referring to empirical data on increasing overlaps of education,
training and work within individual life cycles and on the "long family" caring for
young people until they set up an own family they show the evident plausibility of the
concept. Regarding the prolongation of transitions and the overlap of different life
phases it is important to consider differences according to social class or gender. The
empirical evidence is confirmed by youth and educational facilities which are
confronted by a change of their target group by age and quality of demands. However,
the authors suggest that young adults in Emilia Romagna should be characterized as a
"silent group". Due to the "long family" functioning as a resource network young adults
don't appear as a visible (or audible) group in public, they don't create specific life
forms, nor do they participate in youth rebellions. This contradiction between
invisibility and social demands is reproduced within the institutions concerned: Though
taking notice of the changing age structure they don't adapt the perceptive concepts of
their target group with regard to the categories "youth" and "adulthood". The social
risk of a large non-future-oriented group might only be prevented by "collaborating"
with these new phenomena.
Andreu Lopez Blasco as well focusses the intra-familiar relationships of young
adults. In the Spanish region Communidad Valenciana young people up to 30 years play a
more important demographic role than in any other European region whereas the
unemployment rate is one of the highest in Europe. Therefore the most striking finding
of a recent empirical research has been the positive attitude of young women and men
towards both family and society. These orientations are the presupposition for families
to sustain insecure transitions and to make them continue for a longer and longer time.
In consideration of the short spanish process of democratization it is the parents'
generation to be sceptical about the real harmony of family relationships.
Barbara Stauber and Andreas Walther try to answer the question whether the contributions collected in this book represent a European discourse on "Young Adults". What are the conditions and perspectives of such an intercultural process? The irritations of coinciding similarities and differences comparing the phenomenon "Young Adults" in the European context are considered to be the result of one-dimensional schedules of comparison between "traditional" and "modern" societies. For an analytical separation of presumed common structures and different phenomena a concept of different "paths of modernization" might be useful. The methodological suggestion made is not to keep stuck on "mere" comparison but to initiate common processes of defining and interpreting changes in social structure for which local, regional and national perspectives reveal themselves to be too limited. Such an interpretative process may be described as a pendularious movement between the own (local or regional) and another cultural (or European) perspective. This movement understood as "intercultural hermeneutics" is the intercultural extension of the hermeneutic cycle and might therefore give also new impulses for ethnomethodological approaches on the local and regional level.