Critical Moments: Choice, Chance and Opportunity in Young People's Narratives of Transition

1 `Inventing Adulthoods: Young People's Strategies for Transition' is funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (Ref: L134251008). Further information can be found at www.sbu.ac.uk/fhss/ff/

2 The research was undertaken in schools located in different areas which can be described as follows. In Northern Ireland: Turnmill, school 1, an inner city area with a predominantly working-class and mixed religious catchment; Knowlands High, school 2, a formally integrated school located in a suburban area with a mixed class and religious catchment; St Saviour's, school 3, an inner city area with a working-class and religiously homogeneous catchment (Catholic); and Castleglen, school 4, an inner-city area with a working-class and religiously homogeneous catchment (Protestant). In England: North Park, school 5, a large housing estate with a working-class and ethnically homogeneous catchment; South Park, school 6, an inner-city area with a largely working-class and ethnically diverse catchment; Forest Green, school 7, a commuter belt area with a largely middle-class and ethnically homogeneous catchment; and Crossways, school 8, a rural village with a mixed class and ethnically homogenous catchment.

3 The study builds on `Youth Values: Identity, Diversity and Social Change', funded by the ESRC as part of the Children: 5-16 programme. Further information on the study can be found at www.sbu.ac.uk/fhss/ssrc/youth.shtml

4 Giddens (1991: 114) suggests that experts tend to be brought in as a fateful moment approaches or a fateful decision has to be taken. `Quite commonly, in fact, expertise is the vehicle whereby a particular circumstance is pronounced as fateful, as for instance in the case of a medical diagnosis. Yet there are relatively few situations where a decision as to what to do becomes clear-cut as a result of experts' advice. Information derived from abstract systems may help in risk assessment, but it is the individual concerned who has to run the risk in question'.

5 For example:

Q: Do you think over the last couple of years, there's any moments that have really changed your life, anything that's made you sort of rethink things?

A: When my grandad died really, cause he used to think that the world was all good, cause he like to used to say, don't like hate people and when he died...