Youth has always been regarded as a period of transition from childhood to adulthood with a wide variation in duration and social support and control by family, neighbourhood, education providers and the state. Its defining institution is the education system, its experiential space is the peer group, fun and games, and more recently social media. We understand transitions as life course events in time and social space. On their path to adulthood young women and young men are confronted with many road signs (norms and regulations) and signals (risks and opportunities) that command attention and individual responses. In view of the multiple institutional demands of education and work and the informal expectations in their family and social networks, adolescents and young adults must deal with the challenge of constructing a coherent self (see Chapter 2).

Life course theory states that transitions imply a duality of social structure and individual agency in the context of social pathways (Heinz, 2009b). Their timing and sequencing, direction and outcome are embedded in structural conditions – the economy, the labour market, and family social background and institutional arrangements, educational and welfare systems. Variations are due to agency, for example individual characteristics – competences, motivation, identity and life goals. Transitions unfold via turning points: entering and leaving school, leaving home, graduating, finding a job, forming a partnership, becoming a parent. The timing and duration of such life course events have become less standardised in recent decades. Today the transition to adulthood implies a period of young adulthood and spans the age between 18 (maturity) and 30 (average age of independent living). Social class, gender, ethnic origin and local/regional opportunity structures modify the course of transitions’ trajectories, suggesting straight paths, detours and revisions of directions.

Life course theory argues that focusing on a framework of the political economy of youth cannot illuminate the young person's contribution to the transition process, which is based on their agency, employing several components of their action potential.