Entering the World of Work

This essay sets out to place the transition from youth to adulthood, represented as the process whereby, until recently, the majority of young people entered their full‐time wage‐earning lives soon after leaving school, in some kind of modern historical perspective. An attempt is made to look at the changing relationship of adolescent youth to the world of work, as a result of urbanization and industrialization, with reference to variations in the social mechanics of transition between Germany and Britain. “Critical modernization” and “developmental” theories of transition and occupational choice are assessed but social structure, available opportunities and historical change are still seen as crucial determinants. The transitional process, it is concluded, varies markedly in Europe and elsewhere according to family, class, gender, ethnicity and race, factors which are as important today as in past centuries

Economic growth · Economics · Ethnic group · Industrial society · Industrialisation · Modernization theory · Political science · Social change · Sociology · Transition (genetics · Urbanization · Wage · Anthropology · Gender Studies · Rural development and sustainability · Social Policy and Reform Studies · Youth Education and Societal Dynamics