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This chapter explores the changing forms of the relation between agency and structure in the de-standardized contemporary youth life course, taking time as an analytical tool. At the centre of the analysis lie the processes of social and cultural change that characterize our era, starting from the crisis of the future and the dynamics connected to the redefinition of historicity. In the new century there are firm reasons to believe that social acceleration, an authentic mark of globalization, has become a true feature of our present (and future). As a consequence, we face the passage from the modern phase of time–space compression to one in which the present itself contracts. In this latter context, contemporary young people construct their experiences and shape their lives. Their “situational identities” can be considered as the joint result of these processes and of contemporary individualization dynamics. The second part of the chapter, using empirical results of two researches currently carried out in Italy, analyses in particular how young people make use of a specific “time work” (Flaherty) – an expression of temporal agency – to domesticate their difficult relation with the medium- to long-term future. Through these forms of temporal agency young people are able “to use time against time”: to reconquer agency even though the accelerated contemporary temporal scenario tends to hinder them from implementing their choices.

This paper examines the results of qualitative research with young people of Arab Mediterranean background living in Milan, Italy, and their experiences related to the socalled Arab uprisings and their aftermath from a gendered transnational perspective. Drawing on interviews and on the analysis of online sources, the case study explores the form and extent of the transnational engagement of these young people and their views of the uprisings and the current events unfolding in the region. The paper aims at highlighting the different ways these young women and men take part in the social, cultural and political changes in their parents’ homeland. It also explores the impact of these key historical events on young people’s projects and biography, on their political values and behaviours, on the construction of their identity and their sense of belonging. The analysis contributes to the debate on transnationalism, taking the perspective of the so-called “second generation” emerging from international migration.

The chapter reflects on the changes and continuities in the cultural norms and values related to gender roles, gender relations and the family, as expressed and lived by young men and women in five countries: Algeria, Morocco, Lebanon, Tunisia and Egypt. In doing so, the chapter focusses on the processes and practices of cultural innovation emerging among young Arab Mediterranean generations after the 2011 uprisings. The empirical analysis presented in the chapter relies on qualitative and quantitative data collected through an international youth survey and a multisite ethnographic fieldwork (SAHWA Youth Survey & Ethnographic Fieldwork 2016). Young people emerge as social actors able to cope with structural limitations and mechanisms of exclusion. At the same time, the analysis shows the different way of inhabiting the ambivalent condition of “waithood” by young women and young men in the region.

What are the specificities of youth in Italy as a group? How are they received in civil society and beyond? What kind of approaches have characterized the study of youth in Italy throughout the last decades? In this interview, the editors of this Special Issue open a conversation with Carmen Leccardi, a leading scholar in the field whose work has impacted the study of Italian youth not only in Italy but also internationally. Leccardi investigates these issues diachronically, following and commenting some salient aspects of Italian history that have had an impact on how the lives of young people have unfolded, among them social movements, policies and labour market fluctuations. Revisiting and updating the notion of uncertainty in young people's lives, the interview concludes that youth can be considered as a metaphor particularly able to capture contemporary social changes.

Este articulo reflexiona sobre los cambios y las continuidades en las normas y valores culturales de los jovenes –hombres y mujeres– respecto a los roles y relaciones de genero, en cinco paises del Mediterraneo arabe: Argelia, Marruecos, Libano, Tunez y Egipto. Para ello, se centra en los procesos y practicas de innovacion cultural que han surgido entre las generaciones de jovenes de esta region despues de los levantamientos de 2011. El analisis empirico se basa en datos cualitativos y cuantitativos recabados a traves de la encuesta internacional y el trabajo etnografico multisituado del proyecto de investigacion SAHWA. El analisis muestra a los jovenes como actores sociales con capacidad de hacer frente a las limitaciones estructurales y a los mecanismos de exclusion; al mismo tiempo, senala el distinto modo de habitar la condicion ambivalente de la espera (waithood) por parte de los hombres y mujeres jovenes de la region. This article reflects on the changes and continuities in the cultural values and norms of young men and women with regard to gender relations and roles in five Arab Mediterranean countries: Algeria, Morocco, Lebanon, Tunisia and Egypt. To do this, attention is given to the processes and practices of cultural innovation that have arisen among the region’s generations of young people since the 2011 uprisings. The empirical analysis is based on qualitative and quantitative data gathered through the multi-sited ethnographic fieldwork and international survey of the SAHWA research project. The analysis reveals young people who are social actors able to confront structural limitations and mechanisms of exclusion; at the same time, it describes the distinct way young men and women in the region inhabit the ambivalent condition of “waithood”.

Studying young people's relationship with the future enables us to explore a number of strategic issues that concern their lives and their representations of the social world, their trust in institutions, and their processes of identity construction. Moreover, given the strategic importance of the future in the construction of biographical time, reflecting on this topic gives us an opportunity to explore the current changes in youth as a life stage. In this context, this chapter sets out to understand how this relationship has been influenced by the Great Recession; in particular, whether the increase in social precariousness and the uncertainty linked to it has forced young people to redefine their aspirations and, on a more general level, influenced their capacity for agency. To do this the chapter examines the results of an international survey on youth and the future carried out in 2008, at the beginning of the recession. Second, it analyzes the results of various qualitative studies conducted between 2012 and 2014 in different European countries. The analysis carried out highlights how young people's relationship with the future during the recession differs according to the area in which they live, their position in the world of work, and their different economic, social, and cultural backgrounds. It should, however, be underlined that the bleak outlook offered by the future does not automatically translate into fatalism and resignation. By inventing new “temporal practices,” some young people are attempting to forge a positive relationship with the future, something that also translates into forms of social and political participation. Introduction The dramatic recession of recent years has not only accentuated young people's vulnerability in terms of the labor market and their risk of social exclusion and poverty (European Commission 2012); it has also had a direct influence on their self-representation and their capacity for agency, both of which are connected to their vision of the future. In this scenario, young people's relationships with biographical time have been profoundly reshaped, and this is especially true of their relationship with the time to come, the future, traditionally viewed as the focal point of young people's biographical narratives. The widespread condition of existential uncertainty and the advent of new forms of precariousness (Standing 2011) are indeed limiting young people's ability to view the future as a time of hope and opportunities.

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Contents: Foreword, Andy Furlong Introduction, Carmen Leccardi and Elisabetta Ruspini. Reconceptualizing Youth. New Perspectives and Challenges: Facing uncertainty. temporality and biographies in the new century, Carmen Leccardi Coping with yo-yo-transitions. young adults' struggle for support, between family and state in comparative perspective, Andy Biggart and Andreas Walther Individualization and the changing youth life, Sven MA,rch and Helle Andersen The sky is always falling. (un)changing views on youth in the US, Gunilla Holm, Toby Daspit and Allison J. Kelaher Young Social changes and multicultural values of young people, Helena Helve. Young People and Relations Between Generations: Solidarity in New Zealand. parental support for children in a three-generational context, Sarah Hillcoat-Nalletamby and Arunachalam Dharmalingam Living with parents: a research study on Italian young people and their mothers, Monica Santoro Work and care in the life-course of young adults in the Netherlands, Manuela du Bois-Reymond and Yolanda te Poel Daughters of the women's movement: generation conflicts and social change, Ute Gerhard. Transitions to Adulthood, Social Change and Social Exclusion: Young people and family life in Eastern Europe, Ken Roberts Transition to adulthood in Georgia: dynamics of generational and gender roles in post-totalitarian society, Nana Sumbadze and George Tarkhan-Mouravi Going against the tide: young lone mothers in Italy, Elisabetta Ruspini The transitions to adulthood of young people with multiple disadvantages, Jane Parry Growing up transgender: stories of an excluded population, Surya Monro Index.

It is well known that when youth cultures are debated outside specialised circles, common sentiments tend to prevail, predominantly negative in nature. Youth cultures - above all in the European context - are held to be almost perfectly in line with the logic of the market, and confined within dominant spatial/temporal organization. However, if we look at the experts' views of these issues the picture becomes more nuanced. On one hand the literature underlines the strong temporal pressure that young people are subject to, made tangible by the fast pace of life in cities, together with the tendency of cities to transform historical space into abstract space. Today youth cultures bear the marks of the cult of immediacy, held to be one of the consequences - perhaps one of the most visible - of high-speed society. On the other hand, research highlights direct and indirect youth experimentation in the field of citizenship rights, and 'cultural citizenship' in particular. This chapter focuses on various dimensions that, taken singly or together, help highlight structural elements of the relationship between cultural citizen­ship practices and forms of 'domestication' of the spaces-times of everyday life in cities.

This book engages with the experience of space and time in youth cultures across the world. Putting together contemporary case studies on young cosmopolitans, young glocals and young protesters in cities on five continents, it analyzes new agoras in global cities.

Youth studies is a field of research that is by definition concerned with temporal questions. The most common understanding of youth is as a period of transition: a transition of significance not only for young people but also potentially for society as institutions and cultural beliefs are either reproduced or remade (Tilleczek 2011). Research into these transitions focuses on the movement from one status to another and from ‘youth’ to ‘adulthood’, tracing changes in the timing of these transitions over time and comparing the timing across various groups. Research focused less on youth as a period of transition than on the cultural and symbolic practices of young people also has questions of temporality at its core. These cultural practices necessarily unfold over time, and demand the coordination of time between young people. Despite the centrality of time to many of the questions driving cultures and transitions research, this often remains implicit, and because of this, time is under-theorized. The research in youth studies that is explicitly engaged in thinking about temporality tends to be narrow in its focus, researching and debating whether young people plan for the future.

EnglishThe article considers the normative dimension of female gender stereotypes, underscoring the prescriptive and self-prescriptive power they contain. Particularly highlighted, from the social psychological point of view, is the recurring reproduction (even by women) of expectations of an intra-gender homogeneity based on a traditional female role. Emphasis is put on how this tendency to refuse to recognize intra-gender differences - often evident in job contexts - may contribute to conserving the power imbalances existing between men and women, and to sustaining women's systematic relegation to 'second place' in the workplace. As an example, the article contains some free quotations relating to the qualitative analysis made of women's discursive productions collected in a wider research project on the relation between gender and science. These aspects of stereotypic self- and other-perception - and the social expectations deriving from them - are also discussed in the light of the sociological approach to gender identity, and in their relations to practices and to ongoing social changes.FrenchCette contribution reprend la dimension normative des stéréotypes de genre féminin en soulignant le pouvoir normatif et auto-normatif qu'ils contiennent. D'un point de vue psychosocial, la reproduction constante d'attentes, même féminines, vers une homogénéité au sein des femmes, déclinée sur un rôle féminin traditionnel, est particulièrement mise en évidence. Il est souligné que cette tendance à méconnaître les différences au sein des femmes, souvent criante dans le contexte professionnel, peut contribuer à la conservation des déséquilibres de pouvoir existant entre hommes et femmes au travail en favorisant le classement continu des femmes à la 'deuxième place' dans les organisations. Quelques extraits de l'analyse qualitative effectuée sur les discours féminins relevés dans un projet de recherche plus ample sur la relation entre genre et science sont cités à titre d'exemple. Ces aspects d'auto- et hétéro-perception stéréotypique - et les attentes sociales qui en dérivent - sont également discutés à la lumière de l'approche sociologique de l'identité de genre, dans leur relation avec les pratiques et face aux changements sociaux en cours.

Abstract J. T. Fraser highlighted the distinctive connections between the different levels of temporality that characterize the human timescape. In this context, he also demonstrated a clear awareness of the relationship between sociotemporality and the existential processing of time. Human experience, in its myriad expressions, bears the mark of the social processes and dynamics within which it takes shape. Analyzing this relationship, we can assert that identity itself is marked by the conception of time that characterizes a given historical period. Processes of social change, forms of experience, identities and expressions of subjectivity are therefore interwoven. The ways in which we experience and conceive of time should therefore also be interpreted in the light of this interconnection. In this particular period, information technologies appear to have the power to redefine the whole of human experience, including our experience of time. After analyzing the close relationship between time and identity, and the multiplicity of temporal dimensions it comprises, referencing social phenomenology, the paper explores the nature of the processes of change that characterize our era—starting from the crisis of the future and the dynamics connected to the acceleration of time. The general aim is to highlight the link between historical times, social times and individual times. It looks at the reflection formulated by J. T. Fraser on the multiplicity of times as it relates to the analytical tools developed by the sociology of time.

Time and space are central to youth research. Transitions research investigates the movement from one status to another and often from one place to another. Cultural youth research investigates the symbolic practices of young people, practices that necessarily unfold over time and involve engagements in place and across space. This chapter introduces the most pressing temporal-spatial questions for youth research and the work in youth studies that addresses time and space. The chapter finishes by addressing the challenges for future research in this area. Conceptualizing time and space, and in particular the relationship between the two, will be important to youth researchers’ efforts to understand the increasingly global interaction of youth cultural practices, political movements, and forms of inequality.

The history of sociological research on young people in Italy from the 50ies until the first decade of the 21st century develops long four distinct seasons: the first, the post-war reconstruction and the industrial take-off; the second, the years of youth movements from the end 60ies to late 70ies; the third, the retreat into the private sphere, the transition from political to social engagement and prolongation of the juvenile phase, finally, the fourth, characterized by the difficulties of the transition to adulthood in a declining society.