The New Risks of Old Inequities: The Significance of Context and Choice in the Transition to Adulthood of Disadvantaged, Immigrant Youth in Germany and the United States

A growing body of research has illustrated that as a result of recent social and economic transformations across advanced industrialized countries, young people today take longer and more varied pathways during their... [ view full abstract ]

A growing body of research has illustrated that as a result of recent social and economic transformations across advanced industrialized countries, young people today take longer and more varied pathways during their transition to adulthood compared to previous generations. These demographic trends have revived a long-standing debate about the relative importance of choice versus structural circumstance in shaping individual lives. There is the recognition that structural circumstances are not deterministic and that even disadvantaged, immigrant and minority youth face a plethora of everyday decisions that can shape their transitional trajectories in important ways. This exercise of agency however, is constrained by choice sets structured by important social contexts ranging from families, neighborhoods and schools to systems of welfare, education and employment. In contrast to the largely theoretical debate of whether the importance of choice in shaping people’s lives has increased, a better empirical question is how certain structural circumstances influence young people’s exercise of agency during their transition to adulthood. This paper, submitted as part of the symposium “Immigrant Youth in Transition: Examining New Contexts, Barriers & Conditioning Criteria from Adolescence to Adulthood” attempts to address this question.

Drawing on the accounts of a sample of male second generation immigrant youth (n = 22) growing up under similarly disadvantaged circumstances in Dortmund and Chicago, this paper explores the influence of various levels of social context on decisions during their transition to adulthood. Focusing on the transition from school to work the analysis reveals an unexpected level of similarity in transitional patterns between the two sets of respondents. These findings show that, while national contexts matter in shaping general goals and ideas about adulthood, the young people in this study tend to draw on resources and supports they access through their social networks and relationships when they encounter obstacles and barriers.