Post-16 Education, Semi-dependent Youth and the Privatisation of Inter-age Transfers: Re-theorising youth transition

Abstract

This paper critically reviews historical and contemporary debates around the study of youth transitions and social change in the sociology of education and elsewhere. It argues that current accounts of recent social change of the 'post' variety tend to both over state and simplify the character of these changes. The paper suggests that it is more appropriate to think of change in terms of the reconfiguration of relationships between 'inflexibility' and 'flexibility', independence and dependency, and the public and the private. Substantively, these things can be studied through the 'intergenerational transfer' of 'assets' of various kinds within kin networks. On this basis, the paper argues for a shift away from a narrower focus upon parents that has been the basis for some recent useful and relevant work on educational decision-making in sociology of education in the UK. These issues about decision-making are related to the developing debate around Rational Action Theory and culturalist vs structural approaches. It is suggested that recent work in the areas of stratification and class formation theory would prove of value to these, and other, concerns in the sociology of education.