Theoretical and methodological contributions to Sociology of Youth from transition approach

Abstract

The paper presents and defends the biographical approach in Sociology of Youth. Therefore, youth is defined as a social process of emancipation that involves economical issues (social position and classification in social structure), family issues (family emancipation). The biographical approach is grounded in the analysis of pathways, and the sociological background is focused on the analysis of different forms of pathways and their effects. These «forms of transition» are the main contribution of this paper, with the combination between ages, cohorts and periods. This theoretical approach has a direct translation to the thodological proposal we do: the longitudinal and biographical approach defended in the paper has a productive development of Sociology of Youth. The contribution of the paper comes on from a sociological research based on the survey to young Catalan people, but the research is rooted in the background of GRET (Research Group Education and Work)about the Sociology of Youth and the processes of family and professional emancipation.