Pathways to Adulthood in Changing Societies: Variability and Mechanisms in Life Course Perspective

(2000) - Michael J. Shanahan

Journal: Review of Sociology
Link::
DOI:: 10.1146/annurev.soc.26.1.667
Links::
Tags:: #paper #Transition #school-to-work #LifeCourse
Cite Key:: [@Shanahan2000]

Abstract

The transition to adulthood has become a thriving area of research in life course studies. This review is organized around two of the field's emerging themes. The first theme is the increasing variability in pathways to adult roles through historical time. The second theme is a heightened sensitivity to transition behaviors as developmental processes. Accounts of such processes typically examine the active efforts of young people to shape their biographies or the socially structured opportunities and limitations that define pathways into adulthood. By joining these concepts, I suggest new lines of inquiry that focus on the interplay between agency and social structures in the shaping of lives.

Notes

“In this article, we use sequence analysis to examine the transition process from school to work in Finland, Norway and Sweden and to find how these processes are linked to family formation patterns” (Lorentzen et al., 2019, p. 1285)

“Becoming an adult is no longer a rapid, well-structured sequence of key events (leaving school, entering the workforce, leaving one’s family, marrying and having children); it takes more time and is less homogeneous (Lesnard et al. 2010” (Lorentzen et al., 2019, p. 1286)

“Transition to adulthood is shaped by the overall welfare regime, the nature of educational institutions, and labour market regulations (Breen and Buchmann 2002).” (Lorentzen et al., 2019, p. 1287)

“Research on school-to-work transitions in Europe is plentiful. However, most previous analyses of school-to-work transitions focus on single changes of status (BrzinskyFay 2014).” (Lorentzen et al., 2019, p. 1287)

“The ideal types identified by the cluster analysis revealed that in general the school-to-work transition seem very similar in these three countries. Thus, regarding our first expectation, we conclude that despite some minor differences, Finland, Norway and Sweden share the most frequent types of school-to-work transitions.” (Lorentzen et al., 2019, p. 1301)

“The second expectation proposed that, owing to the severe unemployment crises in Finland and Sweden during the 1990s, problematic trajectories should be more dominant in these two countries than in Norway. We did not expect that a difficult labour market would lead into more permanent marginalization as found in the exclusion trajectory. However, we did expect to find potential traces of the difficult labour-market situation within the destandardized and turbulent trajectory type.” (Lorentzen et al., 2019, p. 1301)