Transitions and Agency in Young People's Lives

Transitions in young people’s lives encompass the dynamic processes through which individuals move from one social role or life stage to another, including shifts in education, work, family formation and civic engagement. Agency refers to the capacity of young people to navigate, negotiate and sometimes transform the structural conditions that shape these pathways. Contemporary research highlights that transitions are neither linear nor uniform; they are influenced by historical timing, cultural expectations and socioeconomic inequalities. Global crises, technological change and evolving labour markets have intensified the complexity of youth transitions, rendering them more flexible yet more precarious. Scholars emphasise relationality alongside independence, showing how young people draw on social networks even as they strive for self-directed goals. The interplay between agency and structure is central: transitions provide opportunities for innovation and self-realisation but also expose young people to new forms of uncertainty and risk.

Research from Nature Portfolio

No recent Nature Portfolio content available.

Transitions and Agency in Young People's Lives publication trend

The graph below shows the total number of articles in transitions and agency in young people's lives across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).

Technical terms

Life course: The sequence of socially defined events and roles that an individual enacts over time, encompassing transitions such as education completion, employment entry and family formation.

Agency: The capacity of individuals to make purposeful choices and to act upon their environments, shaping their own life trajectories within structural constraints.

Transitions: The processes and periods of change through which young people move from one status or role to another, often marked by rites of passage or institutional thresholds.

Temporal opportunity structures: The historically and culturally conditioned expectations regarding the timing of life events, which influence how individuals perceive and enact transitions.

Precarity: A state of persistent vulnerability and instability in social, economic or personal circumstances that limits individuals’ control over their lives.

References

1. Independence and relationality in notions of adulthood across generations, gender and social class. The Sociological Review (2020).
2. “They Really Only Look for the Best”: How Young People Frame Problems in School‐to‐Work Transition. Social Inclusion (2022).
3. Changing Temporal Opportunity Structures? Two Cohorts of Young Women’s Thoughts about Future Work, Family and Education. Sociology (2023).
4. Thinking about the Future: Young People in Low-Income Families. Societies (2022).