Youth Transitions and Social Mobility

Youth transitions mark the period in which individuals move from dependence to independent adult roles, negotiating education, employment, family formation and civic engagement. Social mobility describes the capacity of young people to improve their socioeconomic standing relative to their origins. These processes are shaped by structural factors such as labour market conditions, educational systems, welfare regimes and family resources, alongside individual agency and cultural expectations. In an era of globalisation and technological change, traditional trajectories have become more fragmented and prolonged, with new forms of precarity and uncertainty characterising the passage to adulthood. Patterns of intergenerational advantage and disadvantage persist, making social mobility both a policy concern and a field of scholarly inquiry. Research highlights the interplay between institutional structures—such as apprenticeship schemes, higher education expansion and social protection—and young people’s strategies for managing risks and aspirations. Cross-national comparisons reveal that welfare models and labour market regimes mediate the degree of inequality and opportunity, while transnational mobility offers both pathways to enhanced prospects and reproduces existing stratifications. Practical applications of this research inform interventions aimed at smoothing the school-to-work transition, strengthening vocational pathways and fostering inclusive communities.

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Youth Transitions and Social Mobility publication trend

The graph below shows the total number of articles in youth transitions and social mobility across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).

Technical terms

Agency: Individual capacity to act independently and make choices in shaping one’s life trajectory.

Precarity: Condition of insecure labour and unstable social or economic circumstances faced by individuals.

Life course: Sociological framework tracing individuals’ transitions and pathways across different stages of life.

Transnational mobility: Movement of individuals across national boundaries that influences education, work and social networks.

Social mobility: Change in an individual’s or group’s socioeconomic status relative to their origin.

References

1. Precarious leisure: (re)imagining youth, transitions and temporality. Journal of Youth Studies (2020).
2. Pinball transitions: exploring the school-to-work transitions of ‘the missing middle’. Journal of Youth Studies (2022).
3. Settling down in time and place? Changing intimacies in mobile young people's migration and life courses. Population Space and Place (2020).