Doing Transitions in the Life Course

This open access book provides a unique research perspective on life course transitions. Here, transitions are understood as social processes and practices. Leveraging the recent practice turn in the social sciences, the contributors analyze how life course transitions are done. This book introduces the concept of doing transitions and its implications for theories and methods. It presents fresh empirical research on doing transitions in different life phases (e.g., childhood, young adulthood, later life) and life domains (e.g., education, work, family, health, migration). It also emphasizes themes related to institutions and organizations, time and normativity, materialities (such as bodies, spaces, and artifacts), and the reproduction of social inequalities in education and welfare. In coupling this new perspective with empirical illustrations, this book is an indispensable resource for scholars from demography, sociology, psychology, social work and other scientific fields, as well as for students, counselors and practitioners, and policymakers.

This book is open access, which means that you have free and unlimited access Provides a completely new perspective on transitions in the life course Contributes to understanding how social inequalities are reproduced Introduces methodologies for future research on transitions across the life course

Autorentext

Barbara Stauber is Professor for Educational Science in the sub-discipline of Social pedagogy at Eberhard Karls University Tübingen, Germany. She is one of two coordinators of the collaborative PhD programme Doing Transitions at Goethe University of Frankfurt and University of Tübingen. She has published on youth and young adults, transitions in the life course (especially school to work transitions and transitions into parenthood), and on (riskful) youth cultural practices - both nationally and internationally.

Andreas Walther is Professor for Educational Science, Social Pedagogy and Youth Welfare and Goethe University Frankfurt am Main, Germany. He is Director of the research unit Education and Coping in the Life Course and one of two coordinators of the collaborative PhD programme Doing Transitions at Goethe University of Frankfurt and University of Tübingen. He has published on youth and young adults, transitions in the life course (especially school to work transitions), and on youth participation both nationally and internationally.

Richard A. Settersten, Jr., is University Distinguished Professor of Human Development and Vice Provost for Faculty Affairs at Oregon State University, USA, where he also served as head of the School of Social and Behavioral Health Sciences and founding director of the Hallie E. Ford Center for Healthy Children and Families. A specialist in life transitions, Settersten works flexibly across different life phases and disciplines. He has played leadership roles in the American Sociological Association and the Gerontological Society of America and has received numerous awards for his research, teaching, and service.

Inhalt

1. Doing Transitions: A New Research Perspective (Andreas Walther, Barbara Stauber and Richard A. Settersten, Jr.).- 2. The Trajectories of a Life (Ted Schatzki).- Part 1. Institutions and Organisations.- 3. Welfare States as Transition Regimes: Reconstruction from International Comparisons of Young People's Transitions to Work (Andreas Walther).- 4. Young People's Use and Construction of Institutional Support in Transitions from School to Work (Heidi Hirschfeld and Bianca Lenz).- 5. Young Adults' Exclusive Educational Careers in the Transition to Higher Education or Employment: Key Findings of a Qualitative Longitudinal Study (Heinz-Hermann Krüger).- 6. Organizations as Collective Subjects in the Formation of Transitions Over the Life Course (Eva Heinrich, Nils Klevermann and Bernhard Schmidt-Hertha).- 7. Aging Transitions at Work: The Embodied Experience of Becoming Older (Kathleen Riach).- Part 2: Times and Normativities of Transitions.- 8. Relative Time and Life Course Research (Nuria Sanchez Mira and Laura Bernardi).- 9. Biographical Articulation in Transition (Noreen Eberle, Jessica Lütgens, Andrea Pohling, Tina Spies and Petra Bauer).- 10. Beyond the Mundane: Everything but Ordinary? Reflections on Extra-/Ordinariness in Life Course Transitions (Anna Wanka and Julia Prescher).- 11. Becoming '(Ab-)Normal': Normality, Deviance, and Doing Life Course Transitions (Tobias Boll).- Part 3. Materialities and Transitions.- 12. The Multidimensionality of Materiality: Bodies, Space, and Things in Transitions (Deborah Nägler and Anna Wanka).- 13. Bodies in Transition: Gendered and Medicalized Discourses in Pregnancy Advice Literature (Janne Krumbügel).- 14. How Spatial Sensitivity Enriches Understanding Transitions in Childhood and Later Life (Tabea Freutel-Funke & Helena Müller).- 15. The Significance of Relationality in Doing Transitions (Richard A. Settersten, Jr., Barbara Stauber, and Andreas Walther).