A Possibility to Square the Circle? Youth Uncertainty and the Imagination of Late Adulthood

Abstract

Youth transitions literature has traditionally devoted great attention to identifying and analysing events that are considered crucial to young people regarding their (short term) orientation to the future and wider narratives of the self. Such categories as ‘turning points’, ‘critical moments’, and ‘crossroads’ have been used to identify and explain the events around which young people take important decisions in order to realise the so-called transition to adulthood, each suggesting a sense of rupture. This focus sits within a central interest of youth transition literature, namely to investigate what hinders or facilitates independence. When looking more broadly at how young people imagine their future, however, taking a longer perspective opens insights not only in terms of ruptures, which these categories tend to refer to, but also in terms of the continuities that might also be very important in these narratives. Despite the methodological difficulties in getting young people to speak about their long future, this article seeks to discuss how they see their late adulthood through reflecting on how their narratives play out across different temporal horizons in order to establish their current priorities. Empirically, it is substantiated by essays on the future written by 18-year-old students based in Sardinia, and discusses in particular an emphasis which they put on the long as a term of fulfilment of their values.