‘Trying to push things through’: forms and bounds of agency in transitions of school-age young people

Abstract

The conventional approach to youth transitions has focused on particular transitional points taking place after the completion of compulsory education. This paper focuses on the ways in which institutional regulations, individual agency, and emotions are related in bringing about such significant transitions that take place outside the traditional transitional points and before the endpoint of compulsory education. It seeks to contribute to the understanding of agency as being emotionally and socially structured and interlinked to the family and the institutional resources available for a young person. It uses Ruth Lister's typology of forms of agency as well as the concept of ‘bounded’ agency introduced by Karen Evans in 2007. Drawing on research focusing on the biographies and future hopes of young people involved in programmes offering targeted support, the paper aims to illustrate young people's attempts to take control of their complicated life situations in the areas of family life, peer relations, and education. By initiating a transition from one status to another outside the traditional transitional points, the young people were able to position themselves in a way that allowed them, from their point of view, to become better resourced in their present situation as well as in terms of their future.