Change and Continuity in Education and Work: British perspectives

Abstract

Over the last decade, new perspectives on youth transitions have emerged across Europe, although British social scientists have been somewhat slower to embrace these changes than their colleagues in Germany. These new perspectives, which highlight the importance of the subjective construction of biographies and processes of individualisation, have been strongly influenced by the work of Ulrich Beck. With ‘Risk Society’ having been published in German some five years prior to the availability of an English translation, the incorporation of these ideas is partly explained by restricted dialogue. The centrality of social class within British sociology and a reluctance to abandon a structuralist tradition also accounts for the slow pace of change. However, we suggest that the essential conservatism of British sociologists, who have tended to place a greater emphasis on continuity rather than change, has helped avoid the subjective reductionism which has characterised some European perspectives on youth.