Transitional Friends? Young People's Strategies to Manage and Maintain their Friendships During a Period of Repositioning

This paper draws on a longitudinal study of higher education choices to suggest that, for many of the young people who took part in the research, engaging in the decision-making process with regards to higher education highlighted, often for the first time, important differences between friends. Differences in academic attainment, higher education institution and, for some, proposed course of study at higher education and future career were not seen as value neutral. In almost all friendship groups, differences in these areas were explicitly or implicitly ranked. Recent theorizing on the nature of friendships would suggest that, as the young people became aware of such differences in social location, the equality of their friendships would come under increasing pressure and, in such circumstances, would be likely to change. However, there is compelling evidence from this research that, although the portrayal of equality became difficult for many of the young people, their friendships did not change in this way. Indeed, the stability of many friendship groups over the two-year period was notable. The paper argues that, instead of forging new friendships more congruent with their emerging social locations, the students used a variety of strategies to manage their existing friendships. After describing these strategies, the paper goes on to explore the likely reason why they were deployed and the implications this may have for our conceptualization of friendship. It will consider whether similar strategies are practised in other friendships over the life course, as an attempt to manage difference, or, alternatively, whether they are they symptomatic of the perceived 'transitional' nature of friendships in the years immediately preceding higher education.