Negotiating Difference: Lesbian and Gay Transitions to Adulthood

Abstract

The concept of transition has been at the heart of social science work on youth for several decades. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, a time when the labour market was severely depressed, structuralist explanations dominated understandings of the routes that young people follow into adulthood. The emphasis was on the way that young people’s class positions shaped their transitions from school to work. However, at the end of the twentieth, and the beginning of the twenty-first centuries, changes in the labour market, familial relations and class cultures are creating new life situations and biographical development patterns. Beck (1992) points out that the life course is no longer organized around employment history with the consequence that the possible pathways that young people can follow after school are becoming more diversified. Social change is eroding traditional forms of knowledge and communication. Faced with a proliferation of choices young people’s biographies are becoming increasingly reflexive, with young people being able to choose between a wider range of life-styles, subcultures and identities. Yet, with these opportunities also comes increased risks for young people, in the form of guilt or blame if they end up on the margins of society as a result of their choices.