Rethinking the Youth Phase of the Life-course: The Case for Emerging Adulthood?

TLDR

Emerging Adulthood, a stage between adolescence and adulthood proposed by Arnett, has sparked widespread research across social sciences, yet European youth studies have largely ignored its broader social‑change manifestations. This study aims to broaden the Emerging Adulthood framework by incorporating structural factors and exclusion mechanisms affecting late‑modern youth. The authors employ comparative cohort analysis of age‑30 data from three British longitudinal studies (1946, 1958, 1970) to illustrate changing opportunities and inequality. Their analysis shows that while opportunities for 30‑year‑olds have increased over time, social inequality has also risen, prompting a re‑appraisal of youth as a distinct phase of the late‑modern life‑course.

Abstract

A whole flurry of new thinking and research about young people in the USA has been stimulated by Jeffery Arnett's theory of ‘Emerging Adulthood’. This argues for recognition of a new stage of the life-course between adolescence and adulthood reflecting the extension of youth transitions to independence brought about by globalization and technological change. Although the perspective aligns with developmental psychology's conception of ‘stages of development’, its appeal extends across the social science disciplines and policy domains. However, the rich theorizing of the same manifestations of social change in young people's experience in European Youth Studies appear to have been largely overlooked by Arnett. This paper attempts to redress this balance by drawing into the framework of Emerging Adulthood a wider set of theoretical concerns with structural factors and exclusion mechanisms to which (late) modern youth are subjected. The argument is exemplified by age-30 cohort comparisons across three British longitudinal studies starting in 1946, 1958 and 1970, demonstrating rising opportunities accompanied by increased social inequality. The paper concludes with a re-appraisal of the concept of youth as a phase of the late modern life-course in which the properties Arnett attributes to Emergent Adulthood are just one significant feature.