Change and Continuity in Youth Transitions in Eastern Europe: Lessons for Western Sociology

Key takeaways

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Bibliography: Roberts, K., 2003. Change and Continuity in Youth Transitions in Eastern Europe: Lessons for Western Sociology. The Sociological Review 51, 484–505. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-954X.2003.00432.x

Authors:: Ken Roberts

Tags: #Theory, #Transitions, #SocialHistory

Collections:: Social Theory

First-page: 1

Abstract

This paper argues that the evidence from research among young people in postcommunist countries vindicates and should consolidate conﬁdence in the Western sociology of youth’s conventional transitions paradigm which seeks links between social origins, routes and destinations. Contrary to claims about postmodern ﬂuidity, individualisation, and a blurring of traditional structural boundaries, the expected links between origins, routes and destinations have persisted throughout the transformation of the former communist countries. The relevant evidence also conﬁrms the primacy of education-to-work and family/housing life stage transitions. Other aspects of young people’s lives – their uses of leisure, levels and patterns of social and political participation, and socio-political attitudes, for example –become meaningful and explicable only when set in the context of the routes that individuals’ lives have taken, and the stages that they have reached, vis-à-vis their school-to-work and family and housing transitions. The paper proceeds to argue that the exceptionally thorough changes that are still in process in East-Central Europe and the former USSR reveal with exceptional clarity the processes whereby young people’s life chances are structured in ways that are not of the individuals’ own making. It has been, and it remains, possible to observe how young adults learn from their own youth life stage transition experiences and, where applicable, use the assets that they acquire or retain, to advantage their own children thereby structuring the opportunities that confront all members of subsequent cohorts of young people. Finally, it is argued that the sociological approach being advocated is uniquely able to use the evidence from young people as a window through which to identify the impact of the ongoing macro-changes in former communist countries among different socio-demographic groups in the wider populations.

Citations

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Reading notes

Imported on 2024-05-07 20:01

Contrary to claims about postmodern fluidity, individualisation, and a blurring of traditional structural boundaries, the expected links between origins, routes and destinations have persisted throughout the transformation of the former communist countries. (p. 1)
confirms the primacy of education-to-work and family/housing life stage transitions. (p. 1)
uses of leisure, levels and patterns of social and political participation, and socio-political attitudes, for example – become meaningful and explicable only when set in the context of the routes that individuals’ lives have taken, and the stages that they have reached, (p. 1)
It has been, and it remains, possible to observe how young adults learn from their own youth life stage transition experiences and, where applicable, use the assets that they acquire or retain, to advantage their own children thereby structuring the opportunities that confront all members of subsequent cohorts of young people. (p. 1)
Western sociology the conventional approach to youth has been, first, to recognise, explicitly or implicitly, that youth is a life stage and that the core subject-matter for analysis, therefore, is youth transitions, and second to accept that sociology’s special mission is to identify regularities – social patterns – which prevail in particular societies at given times but which vary according to time and place. (p. 3)
Third, we have recognised, once again either implic- (p. 3)
itly or explicitly, that certain youth transitions are of special, somewhat elevated, importance; those from education into employment (p. 4)
First, these transitions are not accomplished automatically on reaching a given age. (p. 4)
Second, there are important variations in both starting points and destinations in respect of family/housing and school-to-work transitions, (p. 4)
Third, exactly how these transitions are accomplished, and where they end, makes a considerable difference to the rest of the lives of those concerned, and to their wider societies. (p. 4)
Fourth, young people’s experiences during their school-to-work and family/housing transitions act as a substructure. (p. 4)
Investigating transitions in all areas of young people’s lives involves unravelling the interplay between structure and agency. (p. 4)
Hence, it is argued, the life stage has been individualised in ways that prompt young (p. 4)
people to become reflexive, to take charge of, and to shape their own unfolding biographies. (p. 5)
‘Culturalists’ as they are described here are no more single-minded than conventional youth transitions researchers who have debated the relative importance of social class, gender, race, place and so forth. (p. 5)
Some believe that ‘structures’ were always a modernist fiction (Rojek, 1995). (p. 5)
firm structures of the recent past are now dissolving in a new ‘liquid modernity’ (Bauman, 2000) (p. 5)
What unites the ‘culturalists’ is that cultural formations are their preferred starting point from which they may discover, for example, that all bikers have working class origins. (p. 5)
The problem with all the critiques of conventional youth research is that too many crucial facts simply do not fit. (p. 5)
We shall see below that the evidence from the new east cannot rescue the ‘culturalist’ case. (p. 6)
Despite the pace and thoroughness of change in the ex-communist countries, we shall see below that young people’s sequences of experiences still cluster, (p. 6)
Social structures, including routes to adulthood, are always maintained or changed via the meaningful actions of individuals who must always be assumed to be rational actors given their own perceptions of their circumstances and interests (Giddens, 1984; Goldthorpe, 1998). (p. 15)
Studying young people in countries where major macro-changes are in process exposes processes of structuration which, in more stable times and places, are less visible and are most likely to be simply taken for granted by all concerned. (p. 17)
Youth is a learning life stage. (p. 17)