Fashioning Flexibility: Dissolving Boundaries between Employment, Education and the Family among A-level Students Engaged in Full-time Schooling and Part-time Jobs

Abstract

This chapter centres on the refashioning of young people’s transitions to adulthood and an associated reshaping of social identity in today’s world of rapid social change. In setting out the evidence, we draw upon Urry’s (1999) concept of ‘an increasingly borderless world’, transposing this theme to the micro-world of a particular segment of young people — A-level students living in a marginal locale in the north-east of England. Within this small universe, we adjust the lens to focus on these sixth-formers’ work, concentrating on three of the several intersecting social sites which young people in full-time schooling inhabit — education, the family and, increasingly, part-time employment (Hodgson and Spours, 2000; Mizen et al., 1999, 2001). For those in post-16 full-time education, a changing educational landscape and a pervasive work culture (Forrester, 1999) are redrawing and opening up the boundaries between these spheres of social life, and these forces in turn are driven by economic and technological change and the alleged need for flexibility in both labour markets and human capital.

‘… an increasingly borderless world’ (John Urry)

The data are from part of the study Youth, Family and Education: The Formation of the Independent Learner, a project within the ESRC Research Programme: Youth, Citizenship and Social Change (Project number L13425 1009), conducted by the Universities of Teesside and Leeds. Earlier versions have been presented (Allatt and Dixon, 2000a, 2000b), and a short version published (Allatt and Dixon, 2001).