Taking Control of their Lives? Agency in Young Adult Transitions in England and the New Germany

Abstract

The present article provides an overview of findings from the UK Economic and Social Research Council's Youth Citizenship and Social Change Project on how young adults experience control and exercise agency in differing socioeconomic environments. The research builds on previous Anglo-German and UK studies (Bynner & Roberts, 1991; Evans & Heinz, 1994; Evans et al ., 2000), which have contrasted the regulated German and unregulated British approaches to transitions into the labour market. In the present new study, the ways in which social changes have impacted on the lives of individuals have been central to the rationale. The Eastern and Western parts of Germany shared a common culture but operated totally different socioeconomic systems during communism. West Germany and Britain had different versions of the same socioeconomic system, but different cultural histories. Britain and Eastern Germany have experienced, from different starting points, strong effects of market forces and deregulation of previous systems. Government policy in both countries is now focused on 'people taking control of their own lives'. The present research has explored comparatively the life experiences of 900 young adults in the under-researched 18-25 years age group. The sample, drawn from the three cities of Derby, Hannover and Leipzig, consisted of 300 students in higher education, 300 unemployed and 300 employed young people. Three research fieldworkers from the areas under study brought local knowledge and experience to the research process: Claire Woolley in Derby, Martina Behrens in Hannover, and Jens Kaluza in Leipzig. Peter Rudd and the National Foundation of Educational Research collaborated in the design and organization of the databases and the analysis of data. In answering the question posed in the title, the research has shown 18-25 year olds to be struggling to take control of their lives, while the effects of those struggles are bounded in important ways by wider societal features as well as social background and institutional environments. The range of empirical encounters with young adults in the chosen 'terrains' has led to the development of the concept of bounded agency to explore and explain experiences of control and personal agency of 18-25 year olds in the settings of higher education, employment, unemployment and in their personal lives.