Conference Program

Studying young people has never been an easy task for the social sciences. Scholars working in this field have always been required to possess a broad and flexible training, capable of integrating different theoretical and methodological approaches (Cavalli and Leccardi, 2013). Over time, however, understanding who young people are has become even more complex, both because of the growing plurality of theoretical perspectives and because of the introduction of new research methods and techniques (Woodman and Wyn, 2015a; 2015b; France and Roberts, 2015; 2017; K. Roberts, 2007; Spanò, 2018).

Moreover, the category of “youth” continues to be viewed primarily through the lens of problems and difficulties, rather than through the strategies young people adopt to navigate an increasingly complex and uncertain social reality – one that is nonetheless marked by a general improvement in educational attainment compared to the past, but also by growing precarity and rising educational and class inequalities (France, 2016; Ruspini, 2021).

In recent years, however, two Italian sociologists have put forward an intriguing proposal: to recover a Mertonian approach to the study of youth (Pitti and Tuorto, 2021).

Revisiting Merton means bringing back to the center two elements of his theoretical framework that are often overlooked:

1. middle-range theories; (Merton, 1968)
2. the means–ends continuum; (Merton, 1938)

Placed within the Weberian analytical framework, and particularly using ideal types, these tools can offer a simple yet theoretically robust approach to interpreting the strategies young people adopt in confronting social reality.

Sociology has already seen applications of ideal types in the study of youth: one need only recall the works of Goodman (1964) and Keniston (1965), which helped to move beyond the dichotomous view of young people as either “conformist” or “deviant,” a polarization that, in different forms, persists today (Threadgold, 2020).

The first aim of this work is therefore methodological and theoretical: to assess whether the use of ideal types can still support the development of middle-range theories and help us understand how young people respond to contemporary social change and associated inequalities.

The second aim is to address three research questions:

1. Are there differences among young people in their adaptation strategies, interpreted through Merton’s categories previous described by structural differences?
2. Do these strategies shape the way young people interpret the social reality in which they are embedded?
3. And do they influence, finally, their pathways into adulthood?

The underlying hypothesis is that Merton’s categories – conformism, innovation, ritualism, retreatism, and rebellion – remain useful tools for classifying, studying, and interpreting young people’s adaptation strategies.

The analysis will therefore begin to corroborate this hypothesis by addressing the questions outlined above.

The study draws on primary data collected through a survey administered to a sample of 12.628 Italian young people, aged between 18 and 39 years, representative of the national youth population. The questionnaire, designed to investigate the condition of youth in Italy, includes a typological question (Faggiano, 2012) specifically intended to test the contemporary relevance of Mertonian ideal types.

Research on educational inequalities has extensively documented the persistent association between social origin and educational outcomes, highlighting reproductive mechanisms that shape opportunities across generations (Giancola & Salmieri, 2023). Recent contributions in the Italian context have shown that these processes are traversed by tensions and possibilities for deviation. In particular, the work of Romito (2021) and Cangiano (2023) has brought attention to unexpected trajectories, unanticipated mobility, and processes of subjectivation that break statistical expectations, offering tools to conceptualize discontinuity as constitutive rather than residual. At the same time, the notion of "multiple contingencies" (Giancola, 2009) highlights how educational trajectories emerge at the intersection of events, encounters, and relational configurations that exceed linear reproductive logic.

This contribution focuses on educational discontinuity: significant deviations from trajectories expected on the basis of family capita and incorporated expectations. The theoretical framework integrates structural approaches emphasizing continuity between background and outcomes (Bourdieu & Passeron, 1970) theories of rational (Boudon, 1974; Breen & Goldthorpe, 1997) and the sociology of experience, which analyses trajectories as processes of subjectivation (Dubet, 1994; Martuccelli, 2017). The continuum between continuity and discontinuity provides an analytical lens for situating empirical cases.

The research is guided by two questions: How do actors interpret their deviation from incorporated expectations? What forms of subjective work sustain the construction of pathways? The hypothesis is that discontinuity stems not from an isolated voluntaristic act, but from a contingent combination of factors: micro recognition, tensions within the habitus and the capacity to aspire (Appadurai, 2004). These cases become revealing indicators of the margins of agency present even within highly reproductive contexts and illuminate the subtle mechanisms through which individuals negotiate constraints and possibilities.

The contribution draws on 30 semi-structured interviews with young people in Rome displaying forms of educational discontinuity: students from low socio-economic and cultural backgrounds who pursue selective educational pathways (Benadusi & Giancola, 2014); individuals from highly educated families who opt for non-university routes; and trajectories marked by interruptions, reversals, or unexpected reorientations. The analysis follows a processual coding strategy, with attention to processes of symbolic conversion, forms of illusio acquired or destabilized, and recompositions of the habitus.

The construction of the qualitative sample is based on a typological procedure derived from the analysis of OECD PIAAC 2022 data. Using variables on parental education and school track, an index was developed combining paternal and maternal educational levels with students' educational choices. This procedure made it possible to identify family configurations, as well as to distinguish expected positions from deviations relative to family background. The typology was then used to select the cells characterized by upward or downward discontinuity, which guided the sampling of interviewees and anchored the qualitative investigation to a preliminary mapping of possible trajectories.

The expected results concern the reconstruction of the processes of subjectivation that sustain such deviations and the development of an interpretive model capable of integrating structure and agency, thereby contributing to the ongoing debate on the need to conceptualize discontinuities as an integral component of contemporary educational processes.

Young adults today face significant challenges in achieving traditional markers of adulthood, such as stable employment, home ownership, partnership, or parenthood. This paper explores how Millennials (born 1980-1995) and Gen Z (born 1996-2008) in Greece and Italy navigate the tensions between precarity and societal expectations, often experiencing prolonged transitions into adulthood, resulting in an extended “youthhood” (Côté’, 2000).

Drawing on Bourdieu’s concepts of habitus, field, and symbolic violence, (Bourdieu, 1990, 1998, 2000) as well as Côté’s notion of “arrested adulthood,” (Côté’, 2000) this study conceptualizes these experiences as a precarious habitus, showing how structural inequalities shape generational dispositions, life trajectories, aspirations, and strategies for autonomy. In line with intergenerational inequalities by Woodman, Shildrick & MacDonald (2020) this work considers how the socio-political environment reinforces structural barriers that may limit young adults in their transition to adulthood.

Using secondary data from the European Social Survey, this paper examines patterns of socio-economic precarity and highlights how young adults in Greece and Italy, Millennials (born 1980-1995) and Gen Z (born 1996-2008) navigate the transition to adulthood, illustrating how precarious living conditions impact various dimensions of their lives. Despite high levels of educational attainment, many young adults face significant barriers to achieving normative milestones, producing a sense of self-disconnection and uncertainty. These experiences of precarity shape not only individual pathways but also collective transitions, thereby shaping collective futures. By integrating the notion of precarious habitus with empirical analysis, the paper provides insight into the evolving challenges of transitioning into adulthood and the strategies young people adopt to navigate precarity and secure pathways toward independence.

In recent years, international sociological debate appears to be witnessing a «rediscovery of the future». After a long period during which the processes of change that marked the transition to late modernity (Giddens, 1990), together with the climate of social uncertainty that followed (Castel, 2003), led scholars to focus primarily on the strategies adopted by individuals to cope with the disruption of social structures, there is now a renewed interest in reflecting on the time to come (Woodman, 2011). Particular attention is being devoted to young people, who represent one of the social groups most affected by the structural dynamics shaping contemporary societies (Leccardi, 2014).

In order to contribute to the ongoing debate, this contribution, based on 40 biographical interviews conducted in four Italian metropolitan areas (Milan, Naples, Cagliari, and Cosenza), aims to describe the life trajectories and visions of the future of young entrepreneurs from both the North and the South. Drawing particularly on Pierre Bourdieu’s conceptual framework and his notion of effets de lieu, it explores how, in a country with a strong territorial divide, the imagination of the future is closely linked to life contexts and local cultures.

This contribution offers a theoretical and empirical sociological analysis of the existential, identity-related, and civic conditions of contemporary young generations, with particular reference to the Italian context and its broader European implications.

The central argument is that today’s young people inhabit a historically unprecedented social condition, defined by a fundamental contradiction: on one hand, a process of “precocious adultification” driven by media, education, and contemporary socialization; on the other, an “interminable adolescence”, in which entry into the adult world – stable employment, housing autonomy, family formation – is indefinitely postponed. They are like sparks incapable of becoming fire. This unresolved tension produces a deep cognitive dissonance: a structural malaise that is not merely psychological but rooted in the material and economic stagnation of the country. The inequality young people face is therefore not only intragenerational, but intergenerational: it is the outcome of cumulative choices – political, cultural, infrastructural – made by previous generations that have systematically foreclosed opportunities for those who came after.

The contribution also offers an original historical perspective. Youth as an autonomous social category is an invention of industrial modernity: in pre-industrial societies, no existential space existed between childhood and adulthood. It is mass schooling, brought about by the second industrial revolution, that first creates this interval. With the digital revolution, a new phase opens – what may be termed the era of intergenerational agonism – in which the accelerating pace of technological and cultural change renders parental knowledge increasingly obsolete, widening the gap between generations to an unprecedented degree. Today’s young people often possess greater cultural and technological competencies than their parents, yet remain economically dependent on them, producing an asymmetry that is particularly difficult to sustain.

The demographic picture sharpens the analysis further: falling birth rates, population ageing, the widespread phenomenon of only children, and growing youth emigration paint a portrait of a country that is steadily losing its most vital human resources. The emigration data reveal a striking paradox: young Italians tend to migrate precisely to those countries – the United Kingdom, Germany, France – where the infrastructure and development projects that youth movements helped block at home have long been realized. This points to what can be described as a “passive active citizenship”: politically mobilized, but guided by anti-scientific and populist rhetorics incapable of generating constructive agency. The COVID-19 pandemic further aggravated this scenario, stripping young people of the school as a space of peer sociality and autonomous identity construction, with measurable consequences for mental health and psychological wellbeing.

The proposed response is structural: youth malaise is rooted in the country's lack of development, and demands active policies for quality employment creation, support for youth entrepreneurship, and a deep reform of educational systems capable of bridging humanistic and scientific knowledge, rethinking school-to-work transitions, and fostering a citizenship grounded in concrete values – civic responsibility, scientific rationality, and a genuine orientation toward development and social progress.

Italy represents a crucial case for the study of contemporary transitions to adulthood. Characterized by a “latest-late” pattern of leaving the parental home and family formation, and by persistently “lowest-low” fertility (Ongaro, 2001; Billari and Rosina, 2004), Italy stands as a demographic outlier in the European landscape. At the same time, the growing share of children of immigrants entering adulthood introduces new layers of heterogeneity into these already delayed transitions. Despite extensive research on immigrants’ descendants in countries with longer migration histories (Hannemann et al., 2020; Harrison et al., 2023; Kulu et al., 2024), evidence for Italy remains limited, making it a particularly relevant context to investigate how diverse pathways to adulthood take shape.

The relationship between education, union formation, and fertility is typically examined a posteriori as the outcome of interconnected events unfolding across the life course. In contrast, this paper adopts an a priori perspective by focusing on aspirations during adolescence, a life stage in which future trajectories are first articulated. Adolescents’ aspirations are formed at the intersection of individual preferences, family influences, and broader structural conditions, and as such they represent a key mechanism through which socioeconomic and gender inequalities become internalized, negotiated, and potentially reproduced across generations. We therefore examine how educational aspirations are associated with adolescents’ aspirations regarding partnership and parenthood.

The analysis integrates insights from opportunity cost theory, socialisation theory, and adaptation theory. Opportunity-cost theory (Plotnick, 2007) suggests that higher educational aspirations may increase the perceived cost of early union formation and parenthood, fostering postponement. Socialisation theory (Andersson, 2004; De Valk & Liefbroer, 2007) highlights how family background and cultural norms shape early preferences, potentially influencing both the desire for union formation and intended family size. Finally, adaptation theory (Milewski, 2007) provides a framework for understanding how descendants of immigrants may progressively align their behaviours with those prevalent in the host society.

Empirically, we draw on the 2023 nationally representative survey “Children and Adolescents: Behaviours, Attitudes, and Future Plans” conducted by the Italian National Institute of Statistics (Istat). By collecting detailed information on young people aged 11-19 living in Italy, the survey offers a unique opportunity to examine emerging family formation patterns before actual transitions occur. To the best of our knowledge, research examining the ideational dimensions of the education-family formation relationship during adolescence remains scarce (see Alcaraz et al., 2022 for low- and middle-income countries; Plotnick, 2007 for the United States). Using logistic regression models, we analyse whether educational aspirations are associated with (a) the desire to form a union and (b) the desire to become a parent, comparing native and migrant-background adolescents – to shed the light on processes of socialisation and adaptation in a context characterized by delayed transitions and very low fertility.

By shifting the education-family formation nexus to the stage of adolescent aspiration formation, this study assesses whether perceived trade-offs between education and family life are already internalized before actual transitions occur. In doing so, it provides novel evidence on how imagined adulthoods are socially stratified in contemporary Italy.

Peer influence plays a significant role in shaping educational choices(Rosenqvist, 2018; Smith, 2023), particularly during adolescence and the transition from secondary education to higher education. This study proposes a general theoretical framework aimed at clarifying how peer effects have been conceptualized in the scientific literature and how they contribute to educational decision-making. The research builds on a bibliometric exploration of international studies on peer influence in educational contexts, followed by a qualitative meta-analysis of a selection of highly influential contributions. The objective is to provide a synthetic and integrative understanding of peer effects and their role in educational trajectories.

The study is grounded in a sociological perspective that emphasizes the relational dimension of educational choices. During adolescence, reference groups (Merton & Rossi, 1968) represent a central social environment in which individuals develop aspirations, evaluate opportunities, and construct their educational orientations (Osterman, 2000; Jacobs et al., 2002). Educational decision-making is therefore understood not only as an individual process driven by personal preferences or resources, but also as a socially embedded process shaped by interactions, relationships, and shared contexts. Peer relations provide access to information, symbolic support, and models of comparison, contributing to the formation of expectations and perceptions of what is possible and desirable (Raabe & Wölfer, 2019).

Methodologically, the study adopts a qualitative meta-analytical approach based on the interpretative reading and conceptual analysis of selected influential studies. Through an inductive process of coding and synthesis, the analysis identifies recurring themes and interpretative perspectives that characterize the literature. This approach makes it possible to highlight the complexity of peer influence and to move beyond fragmented or discipline-specific interpretations, offering a more coherent theoretical framework. The findings suggest that peer influence should be understood as a multidimensional relational mechanism that connects individual choices to broader social environments. Peer groups function as contexts in which meanings, aspirations, and expectations are constructed and negotiated through social interaction. In this sense, educational choices emerge not only from individual reasoning but also from processes of social comparison, interaction, and belonging (Baumeister & Leary, 1995; Witkow & Fuligni, 2010; Colombo, 2011).

This study contributes to the theoretical understanding of peer effects by emphasizing their relational and contextual nature. By integrating insights from sociology and social network perspectives, it highlights the importance of considering educational decision-making as embedded within social relationships. This framework provides a broader basis for interpreting how educational trajectories are shaped and underscores the relevance of relational contexts in understanding educational inequalities, aspirations, and opportunities.

International research has documented systematic differences between Millennials and Generation X in time use, values, mobility patterns, and media consumption. At the same time, however there is a widespread call to avoid interpreting these divergences as fixed generational traits or treating generational categories as homogeneous and autonomous identities. On the one hand, the observed differences often reflect the interaction between cohort-specific historical conditions and life-course processes, raising the classic problem of distinguishing age, period, and cohort effects. On the other hand, generational unity is internally stratified, as both intra- and inter-cohort differences reflect unequal social origins and differentiated life trajectories.

From this perspective, this study addresses the classic age-period-cohort (APC) problem by drawing on time series data from the annual ISTAT survey "Aspects of Daily Life" (1993–2025). Adopting a cross-cohort survey design, it compares different generations observed at the same age but in different historical periods. Given the evolving structure of the survey, the comparison is restricted to a consistent core of indicators to ensure temporal coherence. At the same time, the study underscores the strategic value of the ISTAT AVQ as a key informational infrastructure for mapping generational transitions.

The core analysis focuses on individuals aged 20-34, enabling a comparison between Generation X and Millennials at an equivalent stage of early adulthood. Within this age group, the study concentrates on patterns of cultural exposure and participation in shared arenas of mediated experience, including cinema attendance, radio listening, newspaper reading, and engagement in religious and civic spaces. Descriptive findings reveal an apparent paradox: while formal education levels have reached a historic peak, making Millennials (and Gen Z) the most educated cohorts, their participation in traditional spaces of cultural mediation and shared narratives has systematically contracted. The analysis then examines whether this contraction occurs uniformly across educational levels or signals a broader reconfiguration of how cultural capital is acquired and displayed in a platform-dominated environment.

The analysis is then extended to the 15-24 age group, where the generational comparison shifts from Millennials versus Generation X to Millennials versus Generation Z. Here, the focus moves from the erosion of traditional shared spaces to the consolidation of widespread digital exposure. Rather than replicating the earlier comparison, this second step examines the technological reorganization of cultural access itself, documenting the displacement of mass-mediated synchronization by pervasive, individualized, and algorithmically structured access to information and cultural content.

Taken together, the findings suggest that generational differences in contemporary Italy are less a matter of stable identities than of shifting configurations of access to culture and public discourse. Millennials emerge as a pivotal cohort between institutional synchronization and platformized fragmentation, while Generation Z represents a further radicalization of this transformation. By integrating an APC design with a structural perspective on education and inequality, the study contributes to debates on generational stratification, digital transformation, and the changing architecture of public experience.

In the era of liquidity (Bauman, 2003), characterized by rapid cultural, technological, and social changes, adolescence emerges as a particularly complex and significant stage of the life cycle, marked by biological, psychological, and relational transformations that profoundly affect the construction of personal and social identity. In this sense, the increasing heterogeneity of cultural, educational, and social contexts makes a unitary view of adolescence increasingly inadequate and instead suggests the need to speak of “adolescences” in the plural, in order to acknowledge the multiplicity of experiences, trajectories, and conditions that characterize new generations. This contribution, based on an interdisciplinary approach, analyzes the transformations affecting young people’s lives, focusing on identity-building processes, peer relational dynamics, and the role of key socialization agents such as family, school, and peer groups. The study, in particular, offers a theoretical and interpretive reflection on the emerging challenges faced by contemporary adolescents, highlighting how social and cultural changes can influence self-perception, modes of interaction, and processes of belonging to social groups and virtual communities. Within this perspective, particular attention is given to the impact of digital technologies and social media,genuine habitats (Rivoltella, 2017) where adolescents spend increasing amounts of time and that profoundly redefine spaces of interaction and communication. The daily use of smartphones and digital platforms provides new opportunities for sharing and participation, but also generates significant risks and critical issues, giving rise to increasingly widespread phenomena such as bullying, cyberbullying, and social isolation. These phenomena underscore the need to interpret adolescents’ difficulties not only from an individual perspective but, above all, in light of the structural changes of contemporary society, which redefine the boundaries between public and private space, modes of socialization, and forms of youth participation. In conclusion, the contribution emphasizes the urgency of rethinking traditional educational models and training interventions, promoting strategies capable of responding in an integrated manner to the educational, relational, and existential needs of new generations.