Agency in the social biographies of young people in Belgrade

Abstract

The article deals with the formation of the social biographies of young people through the interplay of structure and agency. The aim is to provide a grounded typology of patterns of young people's agency within the process of shaping social biographies. The structural context addressed in the article consists of family resources and habitus. The evidence comes from a longitudinal qualitative study with young people from families of workers and families of professionals in two urban neighbourhoods in Belgrade. The narrative analysis of young people's agency that combines longitudinal biographical data and lifelines accounts comes from case studies from the last wave of research. Several patterns of young people's agency that have emerged are explored as related to structural opportunities/constraints, and family habitus. It is argued that family resources and support are mechanisms by which social inequality in Serbian society is reproduced during transition to adulthood. On the other hand, young people as strategic actors develop and exhibit different types of agency within the structural contexts of family resources and habitus.

Keywords:

• agency
• social biography
• young people
• Belgrade
• Serbia

Notes

1. Giddens (1991, p. 113) defines ‘fateful moments’ as ‘times when events come together in such a way that an individual stands at a crossroads in their existence or where a person learns of information with fateful consequences’.

2. The one neighbourhood is an industrial and residential area located in the suburbs of Belgrade, but not far from the city centre (15–20 km). It has been chosen for the research because of its tradition of being a working-class community with work and residence in the same locality. The other location is an inner city area of Belgrade, considered by its inhabitants to have a community identity. I employ stratification rather than class approach, therefore, I refer to the families of workers and the families of professionals.

3. At the first wave, I used non-representative purposive sampling for interviews: the criteria for choosing subjects from children's records from local health centres were father's (and preferably matching mother's) occupation and that they were two parents’ families.

4. The first wave of the study was carried when the children were in their pre-school age. Mandatory primary school in Serbia starts from the age of 7 years and it is divided into two levels (four forms each): lower and higher. The children from the second wave of the study, thus, attended ‘higher forms of primary school’, which is considered to be a critical point in children's cognitive and social competences. The respondents in the third wave were in their late adolescence age. Originally, there were 24 children chosen for the longitudinal study: 12 for each sub-sample, but families of three girls had emigrated during 14-year-long period, while parents of one girl avoided being interviewed again (which means that girls are under represented in the sample). Because of the longitudinal nature of the project – that it follows the same children of a generation, these absent families could not be substituted by others.

5. Although they had a profound impact on societal crisis in Serbia, the civil war and ethnic conflict in the region have not directly influenced families and young people in the study, and therefore, they were not considered as critical moments in their biographies.

6. There are few pilot programmes in vocational schools in Serbia which are based on more work experience with employers who hire students after they finish school. One of the respondents, Milan has used such an opportunity (see later).

7. Focus on family relations, especially in three-generational extended family households, has provided a ‘safety net’ for some young people helping them to get by in hard times, such as during their parents’ divorce.

8. Particularly, their mother's emotional capital, as in case of Ivan, whose family has pooled all of their resources – material, social and emotional – to help him pursue his ambition, held since he was at primary school, to study dentistry.