Vita e Pensiero

A.Walther, Youth - actor of social change? Differences and convergences across Europe Young people are often referred to as the future of society while they are also increasingly made responsible for investing too little in education, for not being ready to adapt their job aspirations, for postponing family building or for refusing participation as active citizens. This discourse neglects the biographical dilemmas young people are facing under conditions of destandardised youth transitions and uncertain futures. It relies upon research conducted in the framework of the European research network EGRIS (European Group for Integrated Social Research) which allow to reflect on how young people’s motivation for agency evolves across different social contexts. The article aims at differentiating the understanding of young people’s agency. First, a biographical approach is introduced. Qualitative research has identified four principles of young people’s coping strategies which reflect such biographical dilemmas and which characterise young people’s agency and decision-making processes: choice, keeping options open, reconciliation, and self-presentation. A second line of differentiation is offered through a comparative approach laying focus on the different cultural and institutional normalities of growing up. A comparative model of transition regimes has been developed which outlines different configurations of how societies regulate young people’s transitions. Key-words: young people’s agency, biographical approach, coping strategies, social and cultural contexts, model of transition, comparative approach.

M. Colombo, Gender’s dreams. Inequalities and resources in the imagined future of the teenagers What and how do adolescents make dreams about their future? How much are they prepared to social competition? Are they aware of gender inequalities and differences operating within the system of choices? Do they exploit these differences for reaching their targets? Through the data set of a national enquiry «Prin 2005 – Adolescents and Life chance», this essays makes distinctions between the «female» and the «male» way to live the present as a condition and a preview of the future, also underlining the existence of gendered resources to imagine the future itself. If nowadays adolescents live in a frame of increasing «de-differentiation» (boys and girls having same targets, similar psychological states, and tacitly agree with the issue of gender parity), with no doubt they are greatly influenced by discriminating rules and mechanism of the system of chances. Girls are requested of a long-time commitment until the graduation in order to obtain security and personal realization. Boys instead are requested to make projects of work, earning and professional career, with a short-term life planning, in order to overtake the «test of future». At the present, girls and boys live together and exchange continuously their visions in a sort of coeducation: material and cultural consumption are the features of the female-side, large network of relations and distance from institutions of the male-side. Key words: gender differentiation, educational choices, orientation towards future, gendered patterns of life planning, gender inequalities.