Revisiting transitional metaphors: reproducing social inequalities under the conditions of late modernity

Abstract

This paper focuses on some of the conceptual implications of changes in youth transitions over the last 40 years. I argue that changes have often been exaggerated with researchers too enthusiastic to jump on theoretical bandwagons without due regard for empirical evidence. While I suggest that there are important changes that impact on the ways in which social classes are reproduced, involving a perception of increased opportunity and greater scope for individual agency, a degree of class‐based convergence and illusions regarding the disappearance of class, I will argue that the new mechanisms lead to the re‐establishment of very familiar patterns of socio‐economic inequality which can largely be understood by employing established theoretical ideas. While biographical approaches are regarded as useful, the continued use of social class is defended.

Keywords:

• biography
• social class
• youth transitions
• transitional metaphors
• individualisation

Notes

1. Beck (2007) makes the same point, but I suspect that this erroneous interpretation is taken from Atkinson without any attempt being made to personally interrogate the ideas.

2. Woodman (2009) has argued that the tendency to criticise Beck for the use of the term choice biography is ill‐founded and represents a poor caricature of his work.