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8.1 Theoretical Frameworks for Studying the Intersections of Life Course and Inequality

The life course perspective, developed since the mid-1970s, mostly in Germany and the United States (Evans and Heinz 1994; Heinz and Marshall 2003; Du Bois Reymond 1998; Kohli 1986; Elder 1995; Elder and O’Rand 1995), has not become a widely adopted approach. They share a focus on temporal life patterns (Leisering 2003, p. 205) but when studying the interrelations between historical time and various aspects of biographies, they refer either to Mannheim’s concept of generation, or to the notion of a cohort (Marshall and Mueller 2003). However, they usually refer to five assumptions (Marshall and Mueller 2003, pp. 9–10). Individual biographies are rooted in time and place, and each phase of life influences the whole life course (life span development). Individuals actively construct their biographies (human agency). Although life events are not strictly predetermined, to some extent they are chronologically ordered (timing of events) and shaped by social relations (linked lives). Theoretically and methodologically, sociological life course research can be rooted both in the interactionist concepts championed by Anselm Strauss, Howard Becker and Everett Hughes, and in the status attainment approach developed by Otis Duncan and Peter Blau.

According to a prominent conceptualisation coined by Martin Kohli in the mid-1980s, life course can be defined as an institutional pattern. The pattern regulates life, understood both as a sequence of events and as a combination of biographical orientations, organising individual activities (Kohli 1986, 2007). It is not just a combination of domain-specific institutions such as those of the family, education, the labour market and retirement, but an articulated institutional complex with its own overarching logic (Kohli 2007, p. 254). The institutionalised life course, as a set of rules increasing predictability of individual biographies, has become a tool for the production and reproduction of the social order in a society organised around paid work (Kohli 1986). The process in question generated problems related to the rationalisation and integration of particular phases and careers (especially within the labour market and family), and the succession of individuals and cohorts on the labour market (Kohli 2007, p.256). The emergence of the normal biography model was connected with diminishing influence of ascription on the course of people’s lives. On the other hand, the construction of an industrial society favoured the differentiation of life course patterns for men and women, as well as for specific segments of the social structure.Footnote 1 From a macro perspective, standardisation and institutionalisation of transitions (between education levels, from education to labour market and from parental family to the newly formed unit) and pathways are seen as important for shaping social structure and mobility between its segments.

The dusk of Fordism stimulated hopes for increasing social mobility and diminishing the influence of ascription on the life courses of subsequent cohorts. It was frequently discussed using terms like choice biography, reflexive biography or do-it-yourself – biography. The debate about the disintegration of the normal biography, a debate that emerged across the 1990s, was fuelled by discussion about the relative role of reflexivity and structure in shaping people’s lives in changing societies (Giddens 1984, 1991; Beck et al. 1994; Beck and Beck-Gernsheim 2002). Controversies also arose around the conceptual framework of risk society (Beck 1992), as the environment where dismantling traditional collective patterns of action results in deconstruction of biographical patterns, (Furlong and Cartmel 2007; Woodman 2009). It seems though, as if Kohli is right to assert that (2007, p. 255), individualisation did not lead to a loss of social order, but relied on and even produced new institutional patterns.

8.2 Transition into Adulthood as the Road to Social Reproduction in Changing Societies

Mutual influences of social inequalities, perceived in terms of both structural and cultural limitations on biographical choices, can be studied with reference to various stages of life. However transition into adulthood, defined in terms of getting employment and establishing one’s own household and family, embraces processes which are key for the individual’s attainment of a certain socio-economic position. Frank Furstenberg (2008, p. 2) reminds us that the lengthening of this stage of the life course in the post-war West was, in fact, rooted in a combination of factors.

The origin of this prolonged transition can essentially be traced back to the widespread democratisation of education that swept American society in the 1960s, following on the heels of the substantial boost given to higher education by the GI bill after World War II. Social surveys on educational aspirations clearly showed the beginnings of an almost universal desire for a college education in the 1970s. Coupled with greater access was a shifting economy that placed higher premiums on education, with the decline of manufacturing and industrial jobs. At the same time, the power of trade unions was fading, foreclosing the possibility of well-paid jobs for unskilled and semiskilled workers. The oil crisis in the 1970s, and the long economic slump that followed, cut deeply into the wages of blue-collar workers. As the demand for education increased, so lengthened the period of schooling required to attain the appropriate credentials, which ultimately postponed this key early marker of adulthood.

Further extension and internal differentiation of transition into adulthood, observed in various countries, found its reflection in the term emerging adulthood coined by American psychologist Jeffrey Arnett (2004). The term refers to persons aged 18–25 who are neither adolescents nor adults. On one hand they do not live separately, they have no children and earn sufficient income. On the other, they are capable of exploring many aspects of life. According to Arnett, core features of the phenomenon in question are observable among young people regardless of class, ethnic origin or gender. This seems questionable in the light of existing data (see the debate between Bynner 2005 and Arnett 2006, but also MacDonald 2011). For example, research has repeatedly revealed large discrepancies in the time taken to reach independence in different countries due to cultural, economic and institutional circumstances. The average age at which young people leave the parental household still varies across Europe, from 20 in Scandinavia to 30 in southern Europe. Biographical discontinuities at the entrance to adulthood are becoming more common, but most of the comparative research (Furlong and Cartmel 2007) confirms well-known structural mechanisms such as the importance of the first labour market experience for further careers (Blossfeld et al. 2005). This supports the thesis that initial inequalities can be reinforced throughout the life course. The thesis is mostly given further weight by monographic works, which usually concentrate on specific groups (such as teenage mothers, working-class or migrant youth etc.). For example, the study carried out in Bristol (Bradley 2005) revealed that class origin of young people was an important influencing factor upon the risk of unemployment. Many other studies revealed that, despite general tendencies to postpone family formation, relatively early parenthood is still characteristic for young people from lower segments of the society.

The authors of the widely discussed book The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better (2009) refer to the report Young People’s Changing Routes to Independence. Published in 2002, it claims the existence of a widening gap between people taking slow and fast lanes to adulthood in the UK. Socio-economic origin would be an important determinant for such a divide. Again, the main correlates for those on the fast track were life events (such as teenage pregnancy) which make young people who are already vulnerable even more prone to drop out from the normal life course.

Within dominant discourses from 1990 and later, individualisation and agency (Brannen and Nilsen 2005) were presented not only as unavoidable, but also desirable consequences of global changes. Manuela Du Bois Reymond (1998, p. 63), who popularised the notion of choice biography, underlined the tension between growing variety of available life concepts and the pressure to adapt to a constantly changing social reality, especially in the labour market. According to Julia Brannen and Ann Nilsen (2005, p. 423), it followed from in-depth studies carried out at the turn of 1990s and 2000s that:

The positive rhetoric of choice has more appeal to, and relevance for, young people whose social background and education provide the resources necessary to think they are the creators of their own destinies without help or hindrance from others, whether from their own resources and/or those of the state and their families. When structural forces and personal resources, such as gender and social class, support one another, there is a tendency for the structural resources to take on an ‘invisible’ quality (Bertaux 1997). For the less privileged, the choice rhetoric can serve to worsen their situation and create a pessimistic outlook on life, since according to such an ideology there is no one to blame but oneself, that is, if one has not made the ‘right’ choices or has not succeeded in achieving one’s aims.

The results of several in-depth studies, published in the 1990s and throughout the next decade, show that the assets which help one to navigate through life more effectively tend to accumulate in privileged segments of the social structure. They also demonstrate that the positive rhetoric of choice can reinforce the advantages following from good socio-economic origin (Ball 2003; Brannen and Nilsen 2005; Du Bois Reymond 1998). Research into intergenerational poverty in societies experiencing socio-economic transformation highlighted the process of forming and applying biographical strategies which, partly due to the lack of institutional support, could not lead to socio-economic advancement (see e.g. Warzywoda-Kruszyńska 1999; Golczyńska-Grondas 2004; Potoczna, Warzywoda-Kruszyńska 2009; Bunio-Mroczek 2010). Even if a disadvantaged youth attempts to fit into the socially and economically gratified patterns of educational and labour market careers, the structural constraints usually become impossible to overcome. The body of empirical evidence supporting this thesis is mainly qualitative, with few examples of comparative studies.

It seems that the distinction between the slow and fast tracks into adulthood which would be characteristic for youth within different socio-economic backgrounds can be seen – at least partly – as due to the range of analyses and the choice of populations under study. One can thus repeat, after French historian Georges Duby, that when the public sphere is retrenching, the family sphere grows in importance. Arguments that the rules of modern capitalism are not advantageous for working class youths have been formulated since 1990s (Esping-Andersen et al. 2002), but they also put pressure on the middle class parents to prepare their children for hardening competition in flexible labour markets. However, the body of empirical evidence on the specificities and changes in the middle class life course across various countries seems to be more fragmentary in this respect, both in terms of comparative data and in-depth case studies (Jeffrey and Mcdowell 2004, p. 134; Ball 2003; Ball et al. 2002).

In turn, if general changes in the social structure are to be understood, there is both the need to reconceptualise class (Savage et al. 2013) – to capture emergent segments fuelled by the expansion of flexible capitalism, with its rules of socio-economic positioning (Sennett 1998, 2003, 2006) – and the need to acknowledge the growing economic gap in many societies, which in itself is a new motivation to study transitions into adulthood across countries. Firstly, increased polarisation in patterns of transition into adulthood may be observed in the future. A trend towards squeezing the middle (Standing 2011) is a consequence of rising polarisation in the labour market. This results in increased risk of being trapped in the low income segment for a (working) lifetime. From a structural perspective, this diminishes upward mobility (Cohen 2009 cit. with Standing 2011, p. 19). Interpreting data from the UK National Equality Panel, he indicates that cohorts born in the 1970s have experienced considerably fewer opportunities for upward mobility than the 1958 cohort (Standing 2011, p. 57). Such tendencies are also observable in the USA; this clearly contradicts the mythology of the American dream. Both intra-and intergenerational fluidity varies across the world, but identification of key paths leading to socio-economic deprivation, should be subject to a closer inquiry.

8.3 Paths into Adulthood as Constructed by Public Policies

In the field of polity analysis, discussion about individualisation stimulated theses about deinstitutionalisation or de-standardisation of the life course (Leisering 2003). The socially constructed concept of the normal life course includes definitions of success and failure, images of educational, family, and labour market careers, their relative importance and the right sequence of phases. It is also a key reference point for convictions about who, under what circumstances and to what extent should support people in the course of their biographies.

The influence of public policy on the patterns of transition into adulthood available to young people has been underlined by many researchers and commentators (see eg. Walther et al. 2002). The identification of country-specific patterns is usually combined with analyses of institutional settings, comprising life course regimes (see: Leisering 2003; Mayer 2005).

An example of such an approach in application can be seen in the works of Andreas Walther (2006), who distinguished four basic types of regime across Europe (see Table 8.1). These four types are highly correlated with general constructions of welfare arrangements, as described by Esping-Andersen and his followers: universalistic, represented by Northern countries (here: Denmark and Sweden), employment-centred (Germany, France and Netherlands), liberal (UK, Ireland) and sub-protective (Italy, Spain and Portugal).

Table 8.1 Transition regimes
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When it comes to the range of topics included in analyses of transition regimes, it is clear that transition into adulthood comprises a large set of processes in various dimensions of life. It is also obvious that such elements of the welfare state as family or housing policy play important roles in shaping the paths to independence available for different segments of society. However, the countries are clustered mainly according to key principles and institutional arrangements of education and labour market policies.

Traditionally, such studies were focused on selected sets of cases and excluded Asian, African and Latin-American countries, as well as nations in Central and Eastern Europe. An explanation for the latter could be given, at least partly, in terms of the rapid changes occurring in post-socialist countries. In turn, Walther admits that constructing typologies not only forces some simplifications, but also necessitates placing dynamic reality into static models, which unavoidably leads to ‘neglecting universal processes of globalisation and individualisation, the transformative powers of which are especially visible in Central and Eastern Europe’ (Walther 2006, p. 125). Literature published in recent years has started to fill the knowledge gap (see for example: Knijn ed. 2012) and look for similarities and differences in the transition patterns across a greater variety of countries, giving the empirical evidence for the existence of meaningful differences within former Soviet Block (ibidem).

Obviously, as the schemes of public policies are rooted in public debates and reflect dominant perceptions of equality, justice and solidarity, the shape of transition regimes can be seen as another manifestation of the social order. In this respect framing the transition from school to work becomes the core element of the gatekeeping system:

Owing to the strategic function of transitions to work in ensuring societal cohesion, state institutions react by attempting to turn them into ‘tame zones’, channelling young people into systemic trajectories regardless of socioeconomic viability and subjective relevance. Erving Goffman (1952) introduced the concept of ‘cooling out’, which refers to the fundamental contradiction within democratic market societies: between the principle of equal opportunities, and the scarcity of recognised social positions. This is even more obvious under conditions of decoupled education and employment, wherein uncertain employment prospects demand the accumulation of as much cultural capital as possible. As individual efforts do not pay off for all, mechanisms are needed to ‘cool out’ the aspirations of the losers. This is executed either institutionally, through professional gate-keepers, who persuade them that their failure derives not from the injustice of the system but from their unrealistic aspirations compared to their abilities, or by the unregulated force of labour market competition, which is buffered or reinforced according to differentials in availability of family resources (Walther 2006, p. 122).

The consequences of social differentiation for shaping the set of available life paths is connected with exposure to risks of biographic discontinuities, which can be episodic, but may also lead to permanent marginalisation. To be simplistic, it could be stated that both tendencies towards welfare state retrenchment (observable in some western countries since 1980s), and recently introduced austerity measures, have been connected to a shift in responsibility for securing various life course transitions and continuity of life. This responsibility has been transferred, as a whole, from the collective onto the individual or the family.

The individualisation of risk in modern societies can be seen as a consequence of demographic trends (ageing societies), changes of relations between the state and the market (and on the micro level – an employer-employee relation) and welfare state retrenchment. In this context, the division of responsibilities for securing the continuity of the life course, which can be treated as key element of life course regime (Leisering 2003), is being renegotiated. In turn, in societies which are organised around paid work, the mechanisms of stigmatisation of those who, for various reasons, drop out from the path of the normal life course are still very efficient and, as some researchers underline, reinforced by public policies. Andreas Walther, while explaining the emergence of the phenomenon of yoyo-transitions across the Europe, stated that:

This de-standardization has been neglected by transition policies more orientated towards a standard or normal biography, reducing social integration to labour market integration (one may further argue that referring only to ‘youth’ is a reduction in itself inasmuch as other life stages and transitions in the life course are being de-standardized as well). A symptom of this mismatch between lived realities and institutional assumptions is the increasing withdrawal and dropping out of young people from schemes and programmes intended to integrate them, initially, into the labour market and then, as a consequence, into society (Walther 2006, p. 122).

These tendencies are accompanied by another tendency: to pedagogise the problems with finding a satisfying position in the labour market, in public discourse. On the other hand, the outcomes of studies tracking public debates around the social categories which are least likely to implement biographical scenarios fitting general images of normal life course (even if those are getting blurred), provoke the statement that public institutions can be very efficient as gatekeepers. This is shown in the works of Loïc Wacquant (2008) investigating the role of the state in criminalising youth from socially disadvantaged districts.

8.4 Transition into Adulthood, Ideology and Social Conflict

The rhetoric employed in youth protests emerging in various countries since 2010Footnote 2 refers clearly to the malfunction of education systems and labour markets. These institutions are perceived both as core instruments of life course policies and, at the same time, key channels for inter- and intragenerational mobility:

youths have always entered the labour force in precarious positions (…), but declining probability of moving into a long-term contract builds up resentment (Standing 2011).

The most recent outbursts of anger towards political elites were even seen by some commentators (see eg. Giroux 2013; Judt 2010) as potential for formation of the youth as ‘autonomous social force’ which could be compared to the ‘baby boomers’ generation. Although verification of such statements seems difficult at the moment, the last 3 years provide clear evidence for the thesis that, in contemporary societies, age and economic divisions can be a field of open social conflict, as both social policies and the biographical orientation of individuals are influenced by public debate on social inequalities.

As Martin Kohli reminds us, in the historical origins of most western welfare states, the key social question to be solved was the social and political integration of the newly emerging industrial working class, in other words, the pacification of class conflict. This was achieved by assuring workers with a stable life course, including retirement as a normal life phase funded to a large extent through public pay-as-you-go contribution systems or general taxes (Kohli 2007, p. 268).

The shifts in discourse across the western world, observed since the beginning of 1980s, paved the way to breaking post-war consensus on redistribution and welfare (Harvey 2007), and the restitution of a laissez-faire approach in various spheres of life. Deconstruction of the life course in its Fordist shape was thus not only a consequence of inevitable global processes, but also of ideologically motivated political decisions, following from beliefs that stimulating economic growth and increasing commodification would be the most rational answer for the shortcomings of the state in its post-war shape. Contrary to some predictions, tendencies towards welfare state retrenchment have not resulted in convergence of state policies across the world. However, the influence of ideas which promote radical individualism and superiority of freedom over equality in welfare debates could not be ignored, especially in the context of socio-economic and political transformation in post-socialist countries.

Many critical commentators of current economic turbulences refer specifically to changes in education and labour market policies as triggers for further deepening of socioeconomic divisions. According to Standing, the emergence of the precariat as distinctive segment of social structure can be linked easily with reforms inspired by neoliberal ideas:

In the end, the precarity traps reflect a discordance between young people’s aspirations and the ‘human capital’ preparation system that sells credentialist qualifications on a false prospectus. Most jobs on offer do not require all those years of schooling, and to present schooling as preparing people for jobs is to set up tensions and frustrations that will give way to disillusion (…) The neo-liberal state has been transforming school systems to make them a consistent part of the market society, pushing education in the direction of ‘human capital’ formation and job preparation. It has been one of the ugliest aspects of globalisation (Standing 2011, see also Giroux 2013).

On the other hand, strong belief in the ‘demand-supply’ principle made educational institutions offer courses which are far from labour market demands and economic rationality. The costs for individuals participating in commercialised education have been rising, and state funding decreasing. As many commentators emphasise (Standing 2011; Giroux 2013), the international reaction to the credit crunch and financial meltdown has included further cuts to public education, and the shifting of this monetary burden to students and their families.

According to Standing (2011), there are two precarity traps for youths emerging from tertiary schooling. One is a debt trap. Let us assume that they want to build occupational identities and careers, which require a long-term strategy. They emerge from college with their certificates and debts, with state-approved bailiffs waiting ominously to collect once they start earning (or fail to do so). Many find the only jobs they can obtain are temporary, and that the wages are too low to pay off those debts. The jobs are not consistent with their qualifications and aspirations. They see and hear that millions of their peers are stuck in jobs for which their skills are ill-matched. They have had to grab what they can, not what would enable them to build that precious occupational identity. The precarity trap is worsened because potential employers may be aware of their indebtedness and worried about their reliability. Internalisation of ‘human capital’ discourses combined with limited access to paid work triggers massification of internships. This increases the gap between those who can use family resources while struggling for professional experience, and those who exist under constant economic pressure.

The emergence of NEET (not in education, in employment, or in training) category of 16–24 years old, observable since the 1980s, especially in the United Kingdom, has opened a new context for discussion about the patterns of transition from education to employment. Also discussed in this light is the interrelation between youth underemployment, social inequality, social mobility and, as Robert MacDonald (2011, p. 440) claims, the shape and dynamics of social classes in UK. Similarly to the statement formulated by Standing on mechanisms pushing young people into precarity in the labour market, MacDonald sees the rise of the NEET category as a consequence of intensive implementation of neoliberal ideas in public policies. Even if the author avoids making generalisations, the quotation below seems relevant for many other countries which, during past decades, have been experiencing economic and political changes: For instance, without doubt the ‘massification’ of higher education has transformed the pathways to adulthood of many working-class young people. Going to university has become part of their set of normal choices and routes, at least for less disadvantaged sections of the working-class (this may soon need to be stipulated in the past tense as, potentially, current changes to university funding re-introduce ‘class closure’) (MacDonald 2011, p. 440).

The body of empirical evidence for ideological principles shaping political discourses about young people is not extensive (see eg. Eleveld 2012). In this context, extensive analysis of the EU’s political agenda for young people and its interrelations with national strategies and arrangements is summarised in a recently published volume edited by Dutch researcher Trudie Knijn (2012), which seems noteworthy.

According to the authors, the ideological principles of the EU social agenda in this respect reinforce further negligence of the needs of young generation. Knijn (2012, p. 4) summarises:

Thousands of young people from Spain have organized themselves in the indignados movement, which is based on quite a different interpretation of what the official EU programme Youth on the Move intended to reach. The EU programme supports bright young people on their way to the best career opportunities in the open European market. Despite the initiative, tens of thousands of equally bright but less successful young Europeans feel the need to make the statement that their European states have nothing to offer at all.

In her analysis of interrelations between theoretical approaches and social policy paradigms in conceptualising risk, Knijn (2012, p. 18) she points to a connection between the shift in social policy schemes and the application of different scientific approaches: Nowadays, the focus is oriented more towards individual human capital, self-responsibility, free rider’s behaviour, and public choice. Hence the use of social-psychological and social-philosophical theories in social policy to explain human risk behaviour as well as provide criteria for justice, redistribution, and the balance between rights and obligations. She claims, after Schmid (2003) that these theoretical frameworks enable more subtle and nuanced legitimizing of social policies compared with macroeconomic perspectives (Knijn 2012, p. 18). The author described three competing paradigms dominating current discourses on young people policies: the social investment approach, the transitional approach and the individualised approach which can be, matching social policy paradigms: social democratic, corporatist and neoliberal. Respectively, these focus on investing in, facilitating and individualising the social risks of newcomers on the labour market (Knijn 2012, p. 21).

The differences in understanding the notion of risk result in diverse ideas about who and under what conditions should deal with it (see Table 8.2).

Table 8.2 A model for policy paradigms and the transition to adulthood
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The review of policy EU strategic documents in the field of labour market policy published between 2005 and 2010 led the authors to the conclusion that two overlapping paradigms seemed to be dominant in the Community recommendations. According to Knijn and Smith, these are the consequence of the long-lasting hierarchy of the social and macroeconomic goals of the EU. As consequence, various problems and constraints experienced by the young people have been noticed only when it got economic justification (Knijn Smith 2012, p. 74). However, the investigate of official strategic documents published by national governments of 27 Member States and their relevance to official discourse of EU pointed at differences in the way ideas dominant on supranational level are adopted or ignored in countries representing various welfare cultures. Even if Member State policy documents on youth employment seemed to focus on social investment approach, these have been mixed with elements of two other paradigms and the detailed analysis of national documents published by subsequent MS governments revealed a considerable diversity confirming.

The analyses conducted by the contributors to the volume voice doubts about generalisations over the convergence of national policies according to neoliberal creed, generalisations which are strong, if not rooted in thorough empirical inquiry. These doubts are formulated by some commentators such as Guy Standing, quoted below (2011):

International financial institutions such as the World Bank demand that ‘inappropriate curricula’ unrelated to the economy should be removed. A report commissioned by French President Nicolas Sarkozy argued that early schooling should focus on employability and that economics should be taught in all primary schools. The UK’s Labour government urged the Financial Services Authority to advise on how ‘to embed an entrepreneurial culture’ in schools. In Italy, Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi claimed that all that students needed to learn were the ‘three i’s’ – inglese, internet, impresa (English, internet, enterprise). Instead of learning about culture and history, children must be taught how to be efficient consumers and jobholders (Standing 2011).

The analyses of official strategic documents published by national governments of 27 Member States and their relevance to official EU discourse pointed at differences in the way ideas dominant on supranational level are adopted or ignored in countries representing various welfare cultures.

8.5 Conclusions

To study the intersection of inequality and life course is to encompass a great variety of research topics. Above all a constantly changing social, economic and political reality creates new circumstances for status passages, just look at Glenn Elder’s classic study Children of the Great Depression (1974), and not forgetting the great legacy of biographical studies symbolised by the famous Polish Peasant in Europe and America (Thomas and Znaniecki 1918/1958).

Current economic turmoil, as well as socio-economic transformation in post-socialist countries, can be seen as a set of circumstances substantial for shaping life paths. In order to move beyond well-known theses about life course destandardisation and fragmentation, subsequent cohorts should be subjected to further comparative research. As the knowledge about life course regimes and transition patterns characteristic of post-socialist countries remains fragmentary, I shall repeat claims formulated recently by Marlis C. Buchmann and Kriesi (2011) that Central and Eastern Europe should be included more systematically in comparisons.

Although an attempt to conduct comparative studies based on qualitative data is always a challenging task, there is a need for further research into the life strategies of young people. The possible links between their socio-economic situation and potential tracks into adulthood should be considered, as well as the relative importance of various factors (public institutions, family, markets) in shaping their lives. As recent biographical research focuses mostly on various examples and aspects of path dependencies, the evidence of transition patterns leading to status reproduction has been provided (both in intra- and intergenerational perspective, see: Atkinson 2010), mostly with reference to various forms of disadvantage. So far, the record of analyses examining the pathways to adulthood that could also be trajectories towards a change of socio-economic position is very scarce (Wong 2011). This question seems particularly important in the context of the changes taking place within the main channels for social mobility, such as the education system and labour market:

What do the swelling ranks of graduates from ‘non-traditional’ backgrounds mean for the way that class is composed and experienced? Do such routes signal social mobility or the way that long-standing class inequalities work themselves out in new ways with new forms (Furlong and Cartmel 2007)? Have they led to a shrinking of the working-class and burgeoning of the middle-class as more and more move happily upward through university and the gateway of professional employment to middle-class statuses and identities? Or are ‘slow-track transitions’ through university to insecure and lower-level ‘graduate jobs’ a new facet of young working-class adulthood? (MacDonald 2011, p. 440)

A complimentary, yet vast, field of the inquiry concerns interrelations between public debate and social construction of the life course as an important context of public policies. This is especially relevant in the context of an emerging debate about the heritage of neoliberalism and possible fields of social conflict in modern societies. The range of problems that could be given a deeper insight include the question whether there are any coherent normative models of life course existing in general public and in elite discourses, and if so how they are connected with existing views on social inequalities and divisions. The crucial point would be to identify the knowledge of elites (politicians, policy makers and stakeholders) about the links between life course and inequality, and their perceptions of the relative responsibility for securing different life course transitions based on ideological and ethical presumptions. A growing number of reports and strategic documents referring to young people, published by supranational bodies, governments and local authorities, create an opportunity to gain insight into the rhetoric used in official discourses. However, these should be supplemented by conducting face-to face interviews with people engaged in creating and implementing instruments which shape the range of life course patterns available to young people.