Working young people and social change old theories; new ways of life

Abstract

Recent transformations in occupational structures and in the profile of job sectors have brought about substantial changes in the way young people begin their active working life. However, their transition to adult life is also associated with the emergence of new ways of life whose content, nature and diversity seem to make obsolete the old theories which try to interpret difficulties in starting one's working life from the economist's point of view. They often tend to make excessive use of generalizations in considering young people as a homogeneous group. This is the case with the structuralist theory of the inadaptation of school to work or the theory of young people's allergy to work. In order to avoid this type of generalization, the author puts forward a much less assertive theory about that which some young people's attitudes and ideas have in common: the theory of different reactions from young people to work, jobs and  enemployment in the changing scene associated with socio-economic changes and the appearance of new ways of life, in which the old theories seem more and more inappropriate to the new reality.