I fäders och mödrars spår. Landsortsungdomars identitetsutveckling och vuxenblivande i ett livsformsperspektiv.

Abstract

Abstract Title: Following in their Father’s and Mother’s Path: Young people’s steps to adulthood in a Swedish municipal community from a life form perspective. Language: Swedish with an English summary, 280 pages. Author: Christer Jonsson Doctoral Dissertation at the Department of Sociology, University of Gothenburg, Box 720 SE-405 30 GÖTEBORG, Sweden ISBN: 978-91-975405-9-9, ISSN: 1650-4313 Gothenburg 2010. This dissertation examines young people, aged 16-24, their life expectations and steps towards adulthood. Life form analysis of their families plays a central role in understan- ding how social and cultural reproduction continues in traditional class-patterns in Swedish late modern society during the 1990’s. Theories of the ’individualized society’ are considered to have less validity for interpreting how these young people look at diffe- rent aspects of their everyday lives. In this study, five groups (types) of young people are distinguished. Four types demonstrate discernible patterns related to the career life form and the wage-labour life form. The young people with this two life-orientation were then separated according to gender for further interpretation. The fifth group of young people seems to be less connected with cultural socialisation in the family; their every-day engagements and their life expectations are devoted to a special interest. The empirical study, grounded in semi-structured interviews, focuses on growing-up in a Swe- dish rural community. Data was collected during a turbulent time in Swedish society. The first occasion of data collection took place at the beginning of the 1990’s when entering adult society had a relatively low threshold. The second occasion, the follow-up study some years later, took place when the unemployment rates of the 1990’s economic crises had reached their summit. This societal changes complicated, particularly for the wage labour-oriented, young people’s integration into adult society. Keywords: Youth, young people, life form, life expectations, social and cultural repro- duction.