A New Youth?

Young People, Generations and Family Life

Elisabetta Ruspini, Carmen Leccardi

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9780754644224
• eBook ISBN: 9781317187172
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

A New Youth? provides a cross-cultural perspective on the challenges and problems posed by young people's transition to adulthood. The authors address questions such as: What are the experiences of being young in different European countries? What can we learn about the differences of being young in non-European countries? Are young people developing new attitudes towards society? What are the risks associated with the transition of youth to adulthood? Can we identify new attitudes about citizenship? On a more general level, are there experiences and new social meanings associated with youth? The volume is comparative between various European and non-European countries in order to identify the emerging models of transition. These characteristics are connected with broader social, political and cultural changes: changes related to extended education, increasing women's participation in the labour market, changing welfare regimes, as well as changes in political regimes and in the representation and construction of individual identities and biographies, towards an increasing individualization. The work offers critical reflections in the realm of sociology of youth by providing broader understandings of the term 'youth'. The detailed analysis of new forms of marginality and social exclusion among young people offers valuable insight for policy development and political debate.

PART I: RECONCEPTUALIZING YOUTH. NEW PERSPECTIVES AND CHALLENGES

Chapter 1

Facing Uncertainty. Temporality and Biographies in the New Century¹

Carmen Leccardi

Introduction

By now the international scientific community should have been convinced that the era we are living in is substantially transforming the fundamental coordinates of the relationship with time constructed by modernity (Adam, 1995; Bauman, 2000; Harvey, 1990; Nowotny, 1994; Sennett, 1998; Zoll, 1988). Contributing to these profound changes in contemporary temporal experience are both the new information and communication technologies, which construct experiences of simultaneity capable of casting doubt upon the principles of sequential and linear causality (Adam, 1992) and, in parallel, the crisis of the temporal model of industrial society. This model revolved around the centrality and regularity of working time, its corollary of the rational use of time linked to scarcity, its ability to coordinate social rhythms and to impose the idea of an abstract time controlled through internalized discipline (Sue, 1994).

The crisis of industrial time brings with it a crisis in the ‘normal’ biography that constructs itself around this time: youth as preparation for work, adulthood as work performance, old age as retirement (Kohli, 1994). Today, biographical narrative seems to have lost its anchorage in this form of institutionalization of the life course, and the dimension of continuity associated with it. More and more often, this narrative is fragmented into ‘episodes’, each of which has its own past and future, limited in range and depth (Bauman, 1995). The repercussions of these processes on models of action and on the ways of interpreting reality have been amply stressed and concern the trajectories of identity (Melucci, 1996) as well as lifestyles, relationships to politics and ethics and to institutions generally.

These new characteristics of social time and their reflections on the construction of biography reverberate directly on the condition of youth. By definition, youth has a dual connection to the time dimension not only because it is ‘limited’, destined inevitably to reach a conclusion, but also because young people are asked by society to delineate the course of their own biographical time, to build a meaningful relationship with social time. This means constructing significant connections between an individual and collective past, present and future (Cavalli, 1988). In this process, meaning is given to overall living time.

The planning dimension is central to this. As has been pointed out (Berger and Luckmann, 1966), the formation of identity in a modern sense is guaranteed by adherence to the logic of the plan. It is the life plan in the context of modernity that constitutes the organizing principle par excellence of biography. Thanks to planning, the future is bound to the present as well as to the past and is anticipated in daily activities, which in turn are strictly planned (Bergmann, 1981).

Starting in the post Second World War period in Western society, the connection between planning and the future gradually went into crisis, in tandem with the waning of the ideology of progress. The image of a future progressive, controllable planned time, both for society and individuals, grew weaker. The term ‘future crisis’ (Pomian, 1981) describes well this widespread social malaise. This crisis, which underwent an acceleration in our ‘world risk society’ (Beck, 1999), is today incorporated in the biographical narratives of young people. In other words, these narratives are shaped by the understanding of the unpredictability of the future and the constant flexibility that this requires.

The reflections proposed in the following pages intend to contribute to the understanding of the mechanisms by which young people today come to terms with the loss of the idea of a future and plan that is specifically part of the ‘second modernity’ (Beck, 1998). In particular, this chapter will focus on ways in which contemporary social uncertainty is part of the biographical constructions of young people, and how it is metabolized and transformed as an eventual resource for action.

With these aims in mind, the results of a recent qualitative study of the temporal experience of young people in Italy (concluded in 2003) will be considered. Now several decades old (having been commenced in the early eighties), the itinerary of analysis within which this research is located focused on the condition of young people on the one hand, and on the transformations of time on the other.

Before giving an account of the results that come from this research, some background is necessary. In the first place, the specificity of the condition of young people in Italy must be considered, if only in broad strokes, and posited in the context of the more widespread transformations of young people’s biographical constructions in Europe. In the second place, it is opportune to offer some general information about the methods of research and some of the specifics governing the criteria that guided the choice to concentrate attention in this chapter exclusively on one of the cohorts included in the investigation, that of young adults between 26 and 29 years old. After having presented a part of the material obtained in the research and using this as reference, the chapter will conclude with some theoretical reflections on the subject of contemporary transformations of temporal and biographical coordinates.

The Uncertain Transition to Adulthood and Young People in Italy

Changes in the transition to adulthood are evident today. In the first place, it takes longer – the time necessary in order to enter adulthood has increased – and it is more discontinuous: the different milestones that characterize this entry, from the end of schooling to leaving home, to the stable entry into the world of work and the construction of an autonomous family, tend to be de-synchronized, that is, to abandon the traditional, ordered temporal sequence. This order facilitated the planning for the practically perfect superimposition of three crucial moments for the transition: abandoning the parents’ home, entering the world of work and forming one’s own family (Galland, 1991). Today, not only is the average age in which these milestones are reached older, but between one stage and another there may be frequent interruptions, slowdowns or pauses: as the Italian title of the book edited by Cavalli and Galland (1995) states, ‘there’s no rush to grow up’. The trend to extend and especially de-standardize the transition (Walther and Stauber, 2002), fragmenting it into discontinuous phases without clearly delineable connections between one phase and another, which are furthermore reversible, is common in European societies,² although as we will see shortly, European countries also show certain specific characteristics.

Likewise gaining in importance are biographical models, increasingly distant from linear trajectories of life (Wyn and White, 1997), which refer to the so-called choice biography (Beck, 1992; du Bois-Reymond, 1998; Fuchs, 1983) that is characterized by strong individualization and at the same time by an accentuation of ‘risky’ traits. ‘Risk biography’ has been spoken of in this sense (Furlong and Cartmel, 1997), connected to the need to make decisions in a social context characterized by great uncertainty.

On the whole, therefore, this reality emphasizes aspects of ‘biographical subjectivization’, which ascribes great importance to individual responsibility in defining choices and generally assigning a leading role to the ability to work out autonomous projects. However, this latter aspect seems contradicted by another characteristic of our time, which is tied to the contraction of collective temporal horizons: the need to avoid long-term life projects, to elude fixity in favour of fluidity, to isolate the present as much from the past as from the future.

So young people live their phase of life in a social climate in which the right to decide what one wishes to become is accompanied by the difficulty of finding reference points in one’s biographical construction so as to avoid indetermination (Bynner, Chisholm and Furlong, 1997; Reiter, 2003). Generally, it may be said that the imperative to choose does not go hand in hand with the certainty that personal decisions will be able to weigh effectively on future biographical outcomes.

If this is the overall framework that today distinguishes European young people, what are the specific characteristics that pertain to Italian young people? First of all, it is advisable to keep in mind the typology of models of transition to adulthood proposed by Cavalli and Galland (1995) to understand these specifics. In this perspective, Italy together with Greece, Spain and Portugal would typify a transition model (called ‘Mediterranean’) whose specific traits may be synthesized thus: extended schooling; a phase of accentuated professional precariousness at the end of studies; a long cohabitation with the parents – even after entering the labour market – that nevertheless provides young people ample space for autonomy; leaving the parents’ home when getting married. This model is contrasted by the one defined as ‘Nordic’,³ with an early leaving of the parental home and later marriage and procreation. Great Britain would constitute a sort of autonomous model that is polar with respect to the Mediterranean model: early conclusion of studies, early entry to the labour market, also early in leaving the parental home and in marrying.⁴

In order to concisely illustrate the profile of Italian young people in the context of this Mediterranean model, let us take into consideration three crucial dimensions for the transition to adulthood: schooling, work and the family.

Schooling. In line with the European context, even in Italy the great majority of young people study: the condition of young people and the condition of students coincide. A relative discrepancy persists however between the European data and Italian data: in Italy, 69.8 per cent of 15-19 year-olds study, while the European average is 76.3 per cent (OECD, 2000). According to the data of the national survey on young people conducted by IARD on a sample of young people between the ages of 15 and 34,⁵ 60.9 per cent of the 15-29 year-olds completed a high school diploma (the percentage was ten points lower in the previous survey done in 1996) while one in four attended university (Gasperoni, 2002, p. 75). Female participation is of particular importance in Italy – as it is in the rest of Europe: not only do girls comprise the majority among students, but their scholastic itinerary presents a greater degree of excellence whatever the level or nature of the cultural and material resources of their families. However, there is still a rather large gap persisting between young people of Northern and Central Italy, areas of economic advantage, and those of the South and the islands of Sicily and Sardinia. Thus, for example, while young people possessing only a middle school degree comprise between 14 per cent and 18 per cent in Northern and Central Italy, in the South and the islands, this percentage oscillates between 23 and 24.6 per cent.

Work. A central problem for Italian young people today is less unemployment – a traditional Italian problem especially as regards the South, young people and the female segment of the population – than precarious/insecure employment. Although lack of employment has been a traditional Italian problem, especially as regards the South, young people and the female segment of the population, the central problem for Italian young people today is precarious, insecure employment. According to the data of the IARD survey (Chiesi, 2002, p. 123), the number of young people who neither work nor study decreased in four years from 19.2 per cent (1996) to 13.8 per cent (2000), because there are fewer people looking for a first job and there are fewer young housewives. Even if in principle, the entrance into the world of work is easier today, young people not only continue to enter it on average at a later date with respect to their European counterparts, but they must frequently be satisfied with marginal or less secure employment (Chiesi, 2002, p. 150). This happens especially in the regions of Southern Italy where the labour market remains very precarious (according to the IARD data related to the 2000 inquiry, among young people employed in the North, almost 65 per cent have a stable job as a regular employee, as opposed to 38 per cent in the South). In a service-oriented society, in other words, the number of young people performing atypical jobs with flexible hours and without guarantees of continuity over time is on the rise. In this regard, the generational discrepancy is particularly marked. Young people looking for a first job run up against the rigidity of the ‘official’ labour market, where mostly male workers in the central age bracket (35-60) find employment, at the expense of young people and women (Cavalli, 2002, p. 515). The latter continue to have, in any case, a weaker position on the labour market even with respect to young men. According to the Eurostat data (Labour Force Survey 1998 and 2000, quoted in IARD 2001b, p. 8), while among young people in the labour market between the ages of 15 and 24 years old the percentage of men is 25.4 per cent, the percentage of women is 10.1 points lower. Young women are, on the other hand, over-represented (4.2 percentage points higher) among those who study (IARD, 2001b, p. 8).

Family. As mentioned previously, long cohabitation between parents and children constitutes perhaps the strongest feature of the Mediterranean model of the transition to adulthood. According to the latest IARD inquiry, 70 per cent of young people between 25 and 29 still live at home, a percentage that is even higher than that registered in 1996 (6 percentage points higher). A third of the 30-34 year olds still live with their parents (Buzzi, 2002, pp. 23-24).⁶ In fact, from the beginning of the nineties, this figure has constantly continued to grow. The extension of schooling (and the tendency on the part of those who go to university to choose schools in the same city where they reside or a city very close by); the difficult relationship between young people and the labour market; the lack of university housing together with the high cost of housing together certainly constitute a constellation of dimensions that contribute to explaining this phenomenon. But these explanations remain insufficient. The cultural propensity to continue living with one’s parents is an example demonstrated by those who have already concluded their studies and who have already found stable work in the labour market. Moreover, in principle this tendency lacks clear-cut divisions in class or gender (even if there is a slight tendency for a more extended stay in the family among young people belonging to upper classes and for young men).

If it is true that the family plays a central role in the economic support of children,⁷ the link that unites the latter to their parents – and vice versa – seems to pass through dimensions that are not just economic. For children, the family represents a shield against social uncertainty, an existential and emotional anchor capable of blocking anxiety about the future. Prolonged living together with parents allows them more easily to construct biographical itineraries by trial and error, or to start existential experiments, leaving aside at least for the moment, existential decisions of a non-reversible character (among them that of bringing children into the world). For parents, in turn, continuing to have children to care for means putting off the unknowns of a phase of life – that of ‘the empty nest’ – which would impose a radical restructuring of daily rhythms and biographical time. Thus, for parents and children, extending cohabitation is transformed into a question of identity. This aspect reinforces the cultural model, characteristic of Mediterranean countries, at the basis of which it is marriage that gives full legitimacy to the choice of leaving parents’ home.

Along with the increased propensity of young people to prolong living with their parents, over the past few decades the family has acquired a more open, flexible and negotiable nature. The great majority of young people enjoy ample space for freedom within the family, and live fairly harmoniously with their parents, thus experiencing the privileges connected to a lack of responsibilities connected with the organization of daily life. It is significant, in this regard, that in the research done at the end of the nineties (ISTAT, 2000), 40 per cent of the sample of young people between the ages of 18 and 34 years old judged their remaining in their families as ‘a normal situation’ (3...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• List of Contributors
• Foreword by Andy Furlong
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Part I Reconceptualizing Youth. New Perspectives And Challenges
• Part II Young People And Relations Between Generations
• Part III Transitions To Adulthood, Social Change And Social Exclusion
• Index