Plans, hopes, dreams and evolving agency: case histories of young people navigating transitions.

Abstract

Young people’s transitions are important crossroads for their future position within society. At the end of obligatory schooling, adolescents have to decide on whether they want to attend higher secondary schooling or to enter the job market. These decisions are framed by educational and occupational aspirations. Based on young people’s narratives in a three-wave panel study, we analyze their imagined future starting one year before completing obligatory schooling. In a qualitative longitudinal case history approach, we analyze their aspirations as well as their embeddedness in their biography. We found that plans, hopes and dreams give more nuance to aspirations and are thus helpful conceptual frames for analyzing transitions. With two case histories, we illustrate different navigation processes: one with educational and the other with occupational focus but both starting with rather vague plans for their next steps. Despite different aspirations, both adolescents navigate the transitional phase and develop agency. The concretization of aspirations through plans, hopes and dreams brings evolving agency to light. Our results shed light on the process of change in young people’s aspirations with an emphasis on the person’s perspective and frame of reference.