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Journal of Youth Studies, Vol. 5, No. 3, 2002

Taking Control of their Lives? Agency in Young Adult

Transitions in England and the New Germany

KAREN EVANS

ABSTRACT The present article provides an overview of ndings from the UK Economic

and Social Research Councils Youth Citizenship and Social Change Project on howyoung adults experience control and exercise agency in differing socioeconomic environ-ments. The research builds on previous Anglo-German and UK studies (Bynner &Roberts, 1991; Evans & Heinz, 1994; Evans et al., 2000), which have contrasted theregulated German and unregulated British approaches to transitions into the labourmarket. In the present new study, the ways in which social changes have impacted onthe lives of individuals have been central to the rationale. The Eastern and Western partsof Germany shared a common culture but operated totally different socioeconomicsystems during communism. West Germany and Britain had different versions of the

same socioeconomic system, but different cultural histories. Britain and Eastern Ger-many have experienced, from different starting points, strong effects of market forces andderegulation of previous systems. Government policy in both countries is now focusedon people taking control of their own lives. The present research has exploredcomparatively the life experiences of 900 young adults in the under-researched 1825

years age group. The sample, drawn from the three cities of Derby, Hannover andLeipzig, consisted of 300 students in higher education, 300 unemployed and 300employed young people. Three research eldworkers from the areas under study broughtlocal knowledge and experience to the research process: Claire Woolley in Derby,

Martina Behrens in Hannover, and Jens Kaluza in Leipzig. Peter Rudd and the NationalFoundation of Educational Research collaborated in the design and organization of thedatabases and the analysis of data. In answering the question posed in the title, theresearch has shown 1825 year olds to be struggling to take control of their lives, whilethe effects of those struggles are bounded in important ways by wider societal featuresas well as social background and institutional environments. The range of empiricalencounters with young adults in the chosen terrains has led to the development of theconcept of bounded agency to explore and explain experiences of control and personalagency of 1825 year olds in the settings of higher education, employment, unemploy-

ment and in their personal lives.


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Research and analysis in this eld has a tendency either to over-emphasize thecontinuities of deep-seated structural inuences or to over-emphasize the dis-continuities and changes in young peoples lives. Gudmundsson (2000) hasargued that these positions tend to be reinforced by the methodology chosen,and he calls for greater methodological diversity in grappling with the complex-ities of the situation of contemporary youth.

No researcher in this eld has seriously doubted that social structures such asethnicity, gender and occupation or socioeconomic status have a signicantimpact on the life chances and life experiences of young adults. Such a view hasdriven much post-war theoretical thinking on the position of young people insociety and the possibilities that they have in higher education, training andemployment. The introduction of the concept of agency, however, is a rela-tively new development. This came about as sociologists and others recognized

that the inuence of social structures was not direct, nor was it deterministic.Young peoples experiences of life were complicated by the fact that they canreact and respond to structural inuences, that they can make their owndecisions with respect to a number of major, as well as minor, life experiencesand that they can actively shape some important dimensions of their experiences(Rudd & Evans, 1998). Several recent studies of youth transitions, based in anumber of different countries, have converged in recognition of the need toreconsider both structural inuences and the sense of agency and controldisplayed by young people as they move into adulthood and various stages and

forms of independence:

The evidence in these studies indicates that many in the youngergeneration are becoming increasingly pro-active in the face of risk anduncertainty of outcomes, and are making pragmatic choices for them-selves which enable them to maintain their aspirations despite thepersistence of structural inuences on their lives. (Wyn & Dwyer, 1999,p. 5)

Youth transitions research has been forced to move in a number of newdirections and to explore the use of new frameworks, terminologies and meth-ods in understanding these phenomena. As Wyn and Dwyer argue:

The evidence suggests that the life experience and future prospects ofthis generation are more complex and less predictable than those oftheir predecessors, and that consequently the established linear modelsof transition to adulthood and future careers are increasingly inappro-priate This convergence of evidence from different countries and

continents points to a need to re-examine established understandings oftransitions and the frameworks which have been adopted in muchyouth research in the past (1999 p 5)


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Agency in Young Adult Transitions 247

Figure 1. Conceptual schema for structureagency.

and typologies of transition behaviours. Such trajectories and behaviours werebased on broadly similar routes to employment, and had their foundations ineducation, family background and the predictability of ultimate destinations inthe labour market (Bynner & Roberts, 1991, p. xvi). Such frameworks rightly

emphasized the importance of structures in young peoples lives, includingdimensions of social class, gender and ethnicity, and the inuence of economicfeatures such as labour markets and unemployment rates. A number ofmetaphors have been used to describe such transitions, including niches, path-ways, trajectories and navigations (Evans & Furlong, 1996). The later studiesmoved from a concentration on trajectories towards personal biographies, intro-ducing conceptions of individualization which suggest that progress through theschool to work phase is based on complex interactions of individual agency and

structural inuences.The present research has developed a conceptual scheme for investigation ofthe individualization thesis in the context of theories that explain structure andagency in different ways. The work of Beck (1992, 1998) and of Baethge (1989)have been taken as theoretical sketches to be explored, contested and developed.I have located these and other theoretical stances within the dimensions ofstructureagency, internalexternal control and social reproductionconversion,as shown in Fig. 1.

In collecting a unique body of new evidence, a high level of cross-institutional

and international collaboration has produced valuable data sets, including verydetailed quantitative survey ndings from the total sample of 900, together with


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analyses of the interview transcripts were triangulated with the questionnairedata. We also drew on case history and key informants data from the earlierstudies, using these to inform the interpretations of our new data, and involvedresearchers and users (young people, policy makers, practitioners) in debateabout the most effective ways to support transitional processes from the earlieststages.

Agency and Control

The present research has been organized around two key concepts: agency andcontrol. In the initial conceptualizations of earlier work (Rudd & Evans 1998),agency was understood as:

Input from young adults as individuals (to transitional processes),emphasising those aspects of social engagement which are predomi-nantly individual, creative, proactive and involve resisting externalpressures.

The present research has moved towards an expanded concept informed by thework of Emirbayer & Mische (1998), a temporally embedded process of socialengagement in which past habits and routines are contextualized and futurepossibilities envisaged within the contingencies of the present moment, to arriveat a metaphor for socially situated agency, inuenced but not determined bystructures and emphasizing internalized understandings and frameworks aswell as external actions.

The second, related, concept of control started with the ideas of control beliefsas subjective representations of [the persons] capabilities to exercise control(Flammer, 1997). This is distinct from the actual exercise of control, which can beconsidered as the regulation of process. According to Flammer, control beliefs

can be conceptualized as a composite of contingency and competence beliefs.Contingency beliefs are beliefs in the probability that certain actions will affectoutcomes in particular ways. Competence beliefs are the beliefs people haveabout their capabilities to act in ways that will produce the probable outcomes.The distinctions between contingency and competence in Flammers work areparallelled by the identication of two components in the work of Bandura(1997). Bandura has characterized control beliefs as a combination of expecta-tions: responseoutcome expectations, plus efcacy expectation. Flammerswork concentrated on the development of three dimensions of control beliefs:

the ontogenic development of the structure of control beliefs, individual differ-ences in the strength of control beliefs, and the micro-genesis of a given control


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we have emphasized interdisciplinary understandings and explored theoreticalstandpoints through our empirical encounters.

Conceptual Schema for StructureAgency

Theoretical perspectives that consider the inter-relationships between structureand agency can be located in relation to three dimensions.

Dimension One

The rst dimension is that of social determinism versus individualization andreexivity in social biographies. The development of the individualization thesis

is accredited to a number of German sociologists, and the usual starting point isBecks outline of a new type of society based on reexive modernization, whichhe called a Risk Society (Beck, 1992, 1998). The notion of a risk society has beenapplied to the situation of an uncertain and fragmented transition experienced

by a young person. Individualization is part of the dissolution of the traditionalparameters of industrial society, including class culture and consciousness,gender and family roles: These de-traditionalizations happen in a social surgeof individualization (Beck, 1992, p. 87). Within the individualized society, theindividual must learn to conceive of himself or herself as the centre of action,

as the planning ofce with respect to his/her own biography (p. 135). Baethge(1989) took this thesis further by applying it to the situation of youth inindustrialized societies. He made reference to the disappearance of class-specicsocialization structures and to a new trend towards double individualization(Baethge, 1989, pp. 2831). The latter trend involved, rst, the structural disinte-gration of social classes or strata into individualized sub-groups and, second,the formation of individualistic identities at the expense of collective identity(see also Sennett, 1998). These perspectives stress the need for new categories

because the old labels or descriptions of youth transitions simply no longer tand have lost their explanatory power. There may well be an acknowledgementwithin this perspective that inequalities remainindeed, very few writers in theeld would argue that inequality has disappearedbut social classes are nowdiffused or have disappeared. As proponents of the idea that people are agentsactively and individually engaged in the construction of their own biographies,Beck and Baethge are thus positioned close to the base of the cube.

Furlong & Cartmel (1997) have argued that these accounts of individualizationare based on an epistemological fallacy. The social world has come to be regarded

as unpredictable and lled with risks that can only be negotiated on anindividual level, while structural forces operate as powerfully as ever, and while


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250 K. Evans

personal horizons developed within cultural and structural inuences) deter-mine their behaviours and what they perceive to be choices.

Dimension Two

The second dimension emphasizes internal versus external control processes.Bandura, Elder, Flammer and other efcacy researchers have emphasizedinternal processes of the acting individual in relation to the external environ-ment. There are limitations to personal control in all domains of life. There aresome aspects of environment and personal circumstance that are extremelydifcult to change. Others can be overcome by the exercise of initiative andlearning. Rothbaum et al. (1982) distinguished between primary and secondarymodes of control. People exercising primary control try to change their environ-

ment in ways that they feel will better t their aspirations. Or they try to changetheir environment to t with their subjective perceptions. Secondary controloperates in reverse, by changing subjective perceptions, aspirations and interpre-tations to match the environment. When primary control fails or is expected tofail because of the obstacles that the individual perceives to be operating,secondary control comes into play more strongly. Flammer (1997) hypothesizesthat a gradual shift from primary to secondary control can be expected over thelife course. It can also be expected that there are large individual differences inthe limits that are encountered early in adult life, and that these also vary

between different socioeconomic and cultural environments.Human development in the rst three decades of life involves increasing

individual control and beliefs. Beliefs in a certain amount of control becomeimportant for well being (see, for example, Connolly, 1989). Studies of over-esti-mation of control beliefs have shown the developmental value of high control

beliefs (Flammer, 1997, p. 85). Over-estimation of control increases scope forfurther development in children. It has been argued that schooling fails tomaximize human potential by reducing control beliefs for signicant numbers of

children. Heckhausen and Kruger (1993) have also shown that desired attributesare seen as more controllable than undesired ones among younger, middle-agedand older adults. People who are directly affected by important changes holdhigher control beliefs in relation to these changes than people who are not yetdirectly concerned with them. This applies particularly to life-course transitions.People also have illusions about control, which go beyond simple over-esti-mation. People sometimes believe they are exerting control even over clearlyrandom events. Taylor & Brown (1988) have reviewed evidence of controlillusion as it relates to judgement of the future. Most people believe that things

will improve for them in the future, that their own future will improve morethan that of others, and that there is a lower likelihood that undesirable events


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The extent to which young people succeed in developing longer-termoccupational goals depends not only on their past socialisation infamily and school, but also to a large degree on the way their identityformation is linked to challenge, and rewarding experience in thepassage to employment itself. (p. 212)

Social biographies of individuals are linked to social structures and institutionsand changing conditions. They are also linked to cultural norms and expecta-tions and how these intersect with institutional structures. Sociologists whoemphasize internal processes of the acting individual alongside reexivity andindividualization are positioned at the intersection of agency and internalprocesses. Those who place emphasis the external limits on internal processesare placed at the intersection of structure and external processes.

Dimension Three

The third dimension places the focus on social reproduction versus conversion,exploring the degree to which social mobility and transformation can be at-tributed to individual and collective scope for action. The original position ofrational choice or rational action theorists was that people tend to act in waysthat are rational in the situation in which they nd themselves. In arguing for aprivileged theory of action, development of this theoretical line has had to

accommodate the numerous cases of action that are apparently not rational byobjective criteria. The arguments that such actions are always subjectivelyrational (i.e. that they appear rational from the actors point of view) weakensthe theory as a sociological theory of action unless the systematic tendencies areinvestigated and explained. Based on law of large numbers, Goldthorpe (1998)has emphasized the over-riding importance of analysing the conditions underwhich actors come to act, from the sociological perspective. He argues thatpeople act systematically, rather than just idiosyncratically, in a way that issubjectively rational. He argues that sociologists should concentrate their ex-planatory efforts on the situation of action rather than on the psychology of theacting individual, aiming to show how social, structural and processionalfeatures of a situation may cause the actor to make choices that are notobjectively rational, but are rational from the actors point of view (i.e. subjec-tively).

Rationality in action is seen as situationally rather than procedurally deter-mined.

it is far more illuminating to investigate empirically, across societiesand cultures, those more particular structures and processesat thelevel of social networks, group afliations and institutionsby which


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252 K. Evans

Understanding Social Regularities and Individual Action

The present research has aimed to gain a better understanding of social regular-ities in the experiences of individuals. In looking at individuals, within theperspective of structuration, we can develop hypotheses about the structuring

effects of contexts while focusing on personal and collective experiences ofagency; that is, the social regulations within and between setting and area, andthe underlying factors that account of these form particular foci for the research.In so doing, we consider the status of the research participants as learners andnovices and the conceptual advances of recent research that has exploredlearning careers and learner identities [1]. Our integrative concepts, however, arethose of control and agency. As Elder (1995) has observed, all social transitionsentail some risk of losing personal control. How this is experienced and actedupon depends on biography to date and on material and social situation. Ourexpanded concept of agency sees the actors as having a past and imaginedfuture possibilities, both of which guide and shape actions in the present. Ouractors also have subjective perceptions of the structures they have to negotiate,which affect how they act. Their agency is socially situated. Our initial researchquestions focused on comparative experiences of control and agency in ourchosen cities and settings and how this links with status as learners.

What are the effects of extended dependency? Do young adults in Germany(which is generally thought of as having a more structured framework for

young people) feel less in control than young adults in England? Are there common experiences across the three areas of gender, ethnicity and

social class? What are the differences in experiences of young people in education, employ-

ment, unemployment and training? Do young people who have gained afoothold in employment feel more in control of their lives than their peers inhigher education or unemployment schemes. Do workplaces foster a sense ofagency and control more strongly than other environments?

Do condence and optimism increase or decrease with age and experience inthe labour market

Our starting points in investigating agency and control through our empiricalencounters involved identication of key variables. The metaphor of actors in asocial landscape that emerged from the initial analyses then guided its laterstages. The aim throughout has been to move the focus from structures ontoindividuals without losing the perspective of structuration (as Gudmundsson(2000) has advocated elsewhere). Specically, we are interested in the variationsof horizons and beliefs, viewed from different positions in the social landscape,

about what is desirable and possible.


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that he/she is in control of his/her life course and that occupational success islargely based on individual effort, while there may be a whole mass of data andtheory, developed at a national, societal or macro level, which suggests thatmany young people, especially from particular social groups or trajectories,have only limited chances of success (conventionally dened) in the labourmarket. This is just a particular manifestation of a classic problem for socialand educational researchers: there is a possible discrepancy between individual/subjective viewpoints and larger-scale social and structural patterns and trends.The difculty for these enquiries can be stated as follows: how can the socialresearch design take account of both the micro and the macro dimensions ofcomplex educational, social and economic processes in the transitions that arepart of early adulthood? Consequently, as well as the substantive aims alreadyoutlined, the present study also has the methodological aims of further develop-

ing research strategies that can take account of the diversity of individual andstructural dimensions affecting young peoples transitions. Researchers need toconsider how to faithfully and accurately discover, articulate and map outpeoples attitudes and beliefs relating to their education, training and careeropportunities, and particularly the part these young adults play themselves increating these opportunities. We need to give consideration to the language usedand the methodological stages and procedures required in such research inves-tigations. How are theoretical conceptions of structure and agency to be linkedwith the lived realities of young adults experiencing the multiple transitions

and status inconsistencies in their lives?One way of researching agency in human lives is to examine cases holistically

and longitudinally, as Bloomer (1999) and Bloomer & Hodkinson (2000) haveshown. Another approach lies in comparing the ways people report and contex-tualize, in the present moment, past behaviours and future possibilities. As theyexperience transitions in their lives from different social locations dened byage, gender and social class, these behaviours and perceived possibilities aremediated by cultural factors such as normative expectations and socioeconomic

structural features such as labour markets and welfare systems.It is the second approach we have used in this research, extending themethodological framework successfully used in previous studies. This frame-work has been strongly inuenced by the work of Ragin (1991), who holds thatgood comparative social science balances holistic study of cases within contextswith analysis of key variables across contexts. The aim is to develop what Raginhas termed an extended dialogue between ideas and evidence, exploring dataand evidence from multiple sources iteratively with reference to theoretical ideasand frameworks discussed earlier.

Methods


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The methodological stages outlined were used to work a way into youngpeoples subjective perspectives on transitions and status passages in work,education and their personal lives. The use of both structured and unstructuredtechniques meant that several different viewpoints (e.g. ofcial, unofcial, insti-tutional, group, individual) were represented and triangulation of methods andof data sources strengthened the validity of the studys ndings. The aim has not

been to draw conclusions about the wider populations of England and Germany,but to uncover commonalities and differences in the experiences of samples of1825 year olds matched by institutional setting in three cities, with nationproviding part of the sociopolitical and structural environment that affectsexperience in signicant ways. Our extended analysis of the sociopoliticalenvironments has been published in Evans et al. (2000).

With the co-operation of the College and University Principals, their Heads of

Department and the subject tutors, Chambers of Commerce, Labour Administra-tions and a range of voluntary and community organizations, broadly represen-tative samples were obtained for each type of institutional setting in eachlocality. Close liaison between the team members allowed adjustments to madeto ensure that the social categories of age, gender and occupational/educationallevel were adequately represented, as well as broad elds of employment andstudy, as appropriate. Nine hundred questionnaires were completed. The inter-view samples were selected from questionnaire respondents who had agreed to

be part of the group interviews, with the aim of maximizing comparability of the

groups. The aim was to conduct 18 group interviews: two in each of the threesettings in each of the cities, involving in total at least 108 of the surveyparticipants. In practice, 21 interviews were carried out involving 136 partici-pants [3].

In line with the aim of contributing to the reconceptualization of agency as aprocess in which past habits and routines are contextualized and future possibil-ities envisaged within the contingencies of the present moment, the question-naire was structured to capture features of past lives, current experiences and

orientations, and future perspectives of our research participants. The Germanand English versions of the questionnaires and group interview frameworkswere developed together and piloted [4]. The aim throughout was to link thethree layers of qualitative, quantitative and documentary data to gain a fullunderstanding of the positions of our respondents in their social landscapes.

Selected Findings

A starting point was to analyse the data for each of the three groups (higher

education, employed and unemployed) separately, comparing the ndings foreach of the groups across and between the three localities (Derby, Hannover and


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of importance in the analysis of agency and control. Twelve viable CONTROL,AGENCY and FUTURE factors have been identied through an initial factoranalysis and scaled into indices.

S(1) sociable/condent

C(1) fullled work life C(2) fullled personal life C(3) believes opportunities open to all C(4) believes own weaknesses matter C(5) planning not chance C(6) believes ability not rewarded A(1) active career seeking A(2) unlikely to movealso F(1) A(3) politically active (group) A(4) helping/people career oriented F(2) negative view of the future

Figure 2 illustrates how the relative proles of the groups of respondents on setsof factors could be compared by setting within area and by area within setting,to identify commonalities and differences worthy of further exploration. (SeeAppendix for Technical Notes.) Subsequent analysis used the full set of qualita-tive, quantitative and documentary evidence to explore the emerging ndingsfurther, with reference to our conceptual scheme, related research and national

contexts.

Actors in the Social Landscape

One of the most striking ndings has been the almost universal recognition ofthe importance of qualications. The achievement of qualications has the statusof a universalized goal. The means for achieving these goals have diversied in

both countries, but more in England than in Germany, and our respondents in

the two German cities were more aware of the effects of ascribed characteristicsof gender, ethnicity and social class than their counterparts in the English city(Fig. 2). More respondents in Derby considered that qualications over-rideother social characteristics in shaping life chances.

To provide insights into the experiences and orientations of young peopledifferently positioned within the social and institutional landscapes in our threechosen localities, analyses compared the experiences of each group in turn acrossthe three cities, as a precursor to thematic analysis across the full matrix. Theexperiences of our respondents within each of the three settings are compared

in separate papers (see Evans, 2001a; Behrens & Evans, 2002). The present articleconcentrates on two of the four earlier research questions for thematic analysis


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F

i g u r e

2

R e l a t i v e p r o l e s o f r e s p o n d e n t s o n s e

l f a g e n c y a n d c o n t r o l i n d i c a t o r s


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the structural foundations of variations in control and agency exhibited by therespondents [5].

Gender

The majority of group interview participants saw the effects of gender in lifechances as outweighed in importance by the effects of educational qualications,effort and performance. In this respect, the qualitative evidence was consistentwith the questionnaire response patterns. Despite this, there was awareness thatparticular sectors of the labour market remain biased towards one or other sex.Beyond this, more subtle forms of sexism were seen to be operating, such aspeople being stereotyped by the way they look and women having to perform

better than men in order to gain an equal degree of respect. There were frequent

references to competence overriding other factors, but within an overall aware-ness that there are differentials in the levels and status achieved by females andmales in employment and the economy.

More generally, the interview transcripts revealed awareness of genderalongside the individual attribution of success, with a sense of acceptance byyoung women of the need to prove oneself more as a female. While there werequite powerful discourses around gender in many of the groups, there weredifferences in emphasis in the perceptions of scope and limits for choice andequality of treatment. Even the English groups appear more differentiated than

Arnot (2000) has suggested. The demands of child-bearing and child-rearingwere at the forefront of the thoughts of our German female respondents.

In the German interviews, although women were generally seen as having thesame chances as men at work, the view was often expressed that women mustat some point choose between work and family. In the questionnaire responses,many more women than men gave priority to child-rearing possibilities assomething they wanted from work in all areas, but more in Germany than inDerby. However, the largest proportion in any group who considered this a

priority was 50 per cent (Leipzig females in higher education). There is littleevidence of the emergence of the new man who pays close attention to familyconsiderations.

Differences in male and female views of equality in society as measured by thefactor believes opportunities are open to all were found only in Leipzig, wherefemales generally believed less that equality existed. This was the case irrespec-tive of their situation in education, employment or unemployment [6].

Across all areas, males had more experience of being unemployed on morethan one occasion. In Hannover and Leipzig, males from working-class back-

grounds were most likely to experience this [7]. In Derby, the number of malerespondents experiencing multiple employment was only slightly higher than


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258 K. Evans

parental home earlier than males, and were more open to the possibility ofmoving away from the area they currently lived in. These are examples ofagency at an individual level. They also exhibited higher levels of collectiveagency in that they were found to be more politically active. This difference wasapparent in the most difcult environments. A possible explanation is thatfemales are more resilient, becoming disengaged less easily than males. Remark-ably consistent differences emerged across the three areas between males andfemales in higher education that appeared to reect greater agency on the partof the female respondents.

Race Ethnicity And Nationality

The ndings shown in Fig. 3 mask the fact that 53 per cent of ethnic minority

respondents in Derby thought that race had a considerable effect in shaping lifechances (compared with 17 per cent non-minority) and 30 per cent thought thatgender had a considerable effect (compared with 18 per cent). In group interviewresponses, the groups had rather less to say on the topic of race than gender, andgave fewer examples, except in Leipzig, where responses reected the highproportions who perceived race as important in life chances. Issues of national-ity aroused strong feelings and reected concerns about the xenophobiareported in recent press coverage of developments in the Eastern part of Germany.That is not to say that the attitudes were themselves primarily xenophobic. The

attitudes expressed recognized that non-Germans suffer particular forms of overtdiscrimination and that this fundamentally affects life chances.

Social Class

Similarly, discussion of social background is inuenced by different meanings inGermany, particularly in Leipzig where class pride (for manual workers andfarmers) in the GDR was replaced by class-based disadvantage for the former at

least. The interview approach aimed to gain insights into this is various ways,through the questions that asked about inuences of family background, obsta-cles, both material and social, and through open questions about the factors thataffect and inuence occupational destinations and career. Ethnicity of therespondents reected the distribution in the local population in each institu-tional setting, as far as possible, but the differences in the nature of thepopulation groups and the numbers were insufcient for statistical analysis to bemeaningful [8].

Social class awareness is shown to be mixed in with family and gender

dimensions in complex ways, with much reference throughout the interviews tothe importance of social connections and the invisible social factors, beyond


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Figure 3. Respondents opinions on the importance of a variety of socialcharacteristics in affecting a persons opportunities in life (numbers andpercentages). Numbers viewing each factor as having a considerable effect on a

persons opportunities.

inuences and benets of their parents occupational background. The effects offraming in limiting what might be seen from any particular social position

(Bloomer, 1999) came through strongly in the interview transcripts, but equallythere were many indicators that forms of social capital were seen as beingconvertible and expandable through qualications, making new connections andtaking chances. This came through in the views, expectations and experiences ofthe respondents in all groups, particularly in the group interviews. However,class-based limits are recognized by the majority in all three localities and mostdisbelieve that talent always rises to the top. Only one-quarter of the Derbyrespondents felt that social class/status does not affect your chances in life,although this is higher than the very small minorities of the Germans who wereprepared to agree with this statement.

Relatively few of the items and measures designed to identify the dimensions ofagency and control in their lives were signicantly associated with the respon-dents social class, where this was measured by fathers occupation [9]. There weremany more signicant associations with their present setting. One variable that isof particular signicance in this research, is the orientation towards long-termplanning, as reected in factor C(5) [10]. As well as being an indicator of pro-activity and of some forms of agency and control, this variable is theoretically of

great interest given the central place given to people becoming the planning ofcefor their biographies in the theoretical perspectives that emphasize human agency


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Figure 4. Factor planning not chance by social class within areas (control 5). Figureis based on comparisons of factor score means.

Comparing Feelings of Control: Views of the Self and Feelings of Control in DifferentSettings

Our third research question asked whether educational settings foster strongerfeelings of control than the employment and unemployment settings in which

people experience the full realities of the operations of the labour market [14].This question, together with our questions about optimism, stemmed from ourearlier work with 1619 year olds in full-time education, which showed highlevels of optimism, positive expectations and feelings of control even in de-pressed labour market conditions.

The pattern of responses is strongly indicative of greater feelings of controland agency among those in employment settings than among those in theenvironments of higher education and unemployment (which are both moreuncertain but in different ways). The items and factor scores that discriminated

most between groups were related to self-condence, reecting self-trust andfeelings of capability to deal with circumstances as they are (see Fig. 2). Views


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(consistent with the earlier ndings) but a minority in both German cities heldthe view that people usually deserve their success [15]. The statement Talentalways nds its way to the top produced much higher agreement from theDerby higher education and employed groups than from their Leipzig counter-parts. About one-fth disagreed in all cities; many of the German respondentsrecorded that they did not know. While these responses from the Derby groupsuggest a strong belief in individual effort and ability, this does not mean thatthey are blind to the effects of social status and class in affecting life chances.

The English respondents belief in the importance of individual effort wasfound, in previous work, to be accompanied by a degree of optimism, whateverthe state of their local labour market (Bynner and Roberts, 1991; Rudd & Evans,1998). We asked whether optimism would decline in older age ranges as therealities of the labour market and other constraints were experienced more

directly, and compared mean factor scores for the factor F(2) negative views ofthe future. There were no signicant differences by age, between the younger(1821 year olds) and older (2225 year olds) in any of the settings or areas.Further analysis, however, has produced a more differentiated account, whenanalysed between settings. Respondents in the employed and higher educationgroups reected the relatively high levels of optimism shown by our previousfull-time education and apprenticeship-based groups. Small differences betweenrespondents with higher and lower occupational status were not statisticallysignicant. The responses of the unemployed groups showed individual attri-

bution of failure to greater or lesser degrees irrespective of age. In comparisonsbetween areas, the results suggest that negative views of prospects do begin tobite in the more economically depressed areas, in the 1825 years age range, aspeople come up against the realities of the labour market (see Fig. 2).

Contradictory responses suggested that respondents in the UK groups feelforced into unemployment schemes and therefore not in control, while at thesame time feeling individually responsible for their predicament. They believedit was down to them to get out of their situation, despite the negative environ-

ment. They experienced stress in dealing with their situation, and emphasizedbeing realistic about what they can achieve. There was little fatalism expressedin any of the interview responses, which were suggestive of frustrated agencyrather than lack of agentic abilities or attitudes. This is consistent with theindividual attribution of failure and suggests that compulsion in schemes may

be counterproductive, particularly in the UK environment [16]. The responsesfrom the West German samples show that these see the unemployment schemes,which seek to imitate the apprenticeship, as the way back to a standardizedcareer, while in Eastern Germany the schemes are seen as a kind of state-created

labour market.


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showed that, despite feelings of lack of control in the least advantaged groupsand disbelief in some of the principles of individualism and meritocracy, mostresearch participants attached considerable importance to individual effort andexpressed the belief that if people worked hard and achieved suitablequalications then they should be able to follow their own independent pathwayin adult life. Social connections, forging them and making them work for you,as well as the importance of image and self-presentation were much empha-sized. They are certainly not blind to the inuences of economic and socialstructures, but the least advantaged emphasized that they have to be realisticin their individual aspirations and goals. It was striking that there was littlesense of fatalism in any of the interview encounters, with only three interactionsout of hundreds coded as displaying fatalistic attitudes. Frustrated agency andstruggle characterized the day-to-day experiences of many of the young people

who were in disadvantaged situations. In explaining the individual attributionsof success and failure within socially structured environments and the almostuniversal recognition of the importance of qualications, we have lookedthrough the lens of agency as a socially situated process, shaped by theexperiences of the past, the chances present in the current moment and theperceptions of possible futures, to nd the concept of bounded agency. Theseyoung adults are undoubtedly manifesting a sense of agency, but there are anumber of boundaries or barriers that circumscribe and sometimes prevent theexpression of agency. The ndings also further challenge the simplistic appli-

cation of the concept of individualization in differing socioeconomic andcultural environments, in ways which imply or assume unilinear trends withinundifferentiated contexts of modernization.

One of our starting points (Rudd & Evans, 1998) was to argue that manystudies of youth transitions have under-estimated the degree of choice or agencyevident in transitional processes. While the individualization thesis placesagency centre stage, accounts of individualization and structuration, as Gud-mundsson (2000) has pointed out, are no more than theoretical sketches, which

can be developed and contested in empirical encounters. This has allowed forthe emergence of a range of middle ground theoretical positions (Fig. 5).The present research together with the English and Anglo-German studies

that preceded it offer an accumulating set of empirical encounters throughwhich the limits and possibilities of theoretical and analytical approaches can beconsidered [17]. The evidence (Evans et al., 2000) suggests that agency operatesin differentiated and complex ways in relation to the individuals subjectivelyperceived frames for action and decision. Thus, a persons frame has boundariesand limits that can change over time, but that have structural foundations in

ascribed characteristics such as gender and social/educational inheritance, inacquired characteristics of education and qualication, and in the segments of


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Figure

5.

Loca

tingboundedagencyinmiddlerangetheory.


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264 K. Evans

landscape involving the dynamics of multiple, interlocking sociobiographical journeys in a social terrain. This makes a conceptual advance in linking socialchange and individual lives. It goes beyond the core assumption of the lifecourse paradigm which asserts that developmental processes and outcomes areshaped by the life trajectories people follow, whether reective of good or badtimes (Elder, 1995, p. 49) by examining the possibility that the ows of inuenceare multiple sometimes mutually reinforcing and reciprocal. For example, am-

bitious goals and endeavours are likely to appeal to young people who havestrong control beliefs and not to those lacking self-condence. In turn, theprogress in working toward goals of this kind tends to further enhance a senseof personal agency. Beyond this, we argue that social relationships also structureexperience and interlock with personal constraints in complex ways, whileexternal inuences and constraints turn into modes of agency through a process

of internalization.Goldthorpes (1998) answer to the agency problem is that a calculation of costsand benet is involved, while accepting that rationality operates within individ-uals horizons and social norms and calling for more cross-cultural studies toilluminate this. Our cross-cultural study did not set out to study the rationality,objective or subjective of our respondents decision-making, but it revealed theapparent rationality of our respondents perceptions and actions in relation tothe features of the three labour markets involved and their positions in thesocial landscape. However, these are as well explained by the individually

perceived need to maximize their options and minimize social risk as they are by any calculation of cost and benet. Furthermore, our ndings support thearguments that social divisions are becoming obscured by a universalized beliefin competence and that this is most advanced in market-oriented environments[19]. Our group interview transcripts demonstrated how social differences areperceived and collectively experienced but how, in discussion, questions ofcompetence, will and moral resolve permeated and often dominated thediscourse. This was particularly marked in extended discussions of genderdifferences [20]. Our further analysis is considering whether our research partic-ipants may be converting social and cultural inheritance into action in new butsocially differentiated and bounded ways.

The apparent differences in orientations to life project planning may beexplained in part by interactions between the generations, and the extent towhich parents are able to secure the prospect of better lives and opportunitiesfor their children. The changing but bounded aspirations and expressions ofagency may also be explained by sociocultural inuences experienced in theirpeer groups and institutional settings, as well as by the contingencies inherent

in life transitions. There are some important indicators of collectivities inperceptions of the social landscape and common experiences that were wellarticulated (and may therefore be surmised to be well internalized) Socially


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expansion of concepts of the life course to account more fully of subjectivitiesand interlocking social relationships; and

extension of social theories of learning to learner identities and learningcareers into adulthood and through the life course.

The evidence of the present study supports the view that the more insecure andexible system (represented by the English labour market of Derby) necessitatesgreater pro-activity and the maintenance of the positive approach to opportuni-ties. This arises out of individual attributions of success and failure, which arethemselves linked with beliefs that opportunities are open to all. For youngadults in Eastern Germany, our previous ndings [21] showed that marketsignals were picked up quickly and, in our 199698 case studies, behaviours inthe Eastern city were aligning with those of our English counterparts asunregulated ways into the labour market opened up. The subsequent reassertion

of the heavily regulated apprenticeship system and the introduction of pro-grammes to stabilize and regulate broken transitions into the labour market for1825 year olds is similarly reected in their orientations and expectations. Foryoung adults in the case studies carried out in 199698, agency and active

behaviours created chances for some of those in the most precarious situations,to gain newly appearing footholds in the labour market. Our current respon-dents show, by comparison, less short-term pro-activity and renewed hopes ofways back to standardized careers through a government-created labour market.This is associated with a longer-term planning orientation, a different kind ofpro-activity. But as actors move in these social landscapes, spaces open up foraction that is not wholly reducible to the effects of social reproduction orunderlying structural features. The concept of bounded agency provides afocus for further consideration of policy issues. Young adults do manifestagentic beliefs in relation to work and their social environment, but encounterfrustrations in expressing or acting on them. There are obviously some con-straints in a social landscape that will be very difcult to move or remove, butothers might be reduced through new policy initiatives or foci. For example,

policies have to ensure that the greatest demands to take control of their livesdo not fall on those who are the least powerfully placed in the landscape. Thismeans that agencies working with young people need to emphasize brokerageand advocacy as a primary aim and function, to the extent that young adultsperceive and experience this to be as real as the emphasis that is currently placedon their decits.

Young people are social actors in a social landscape. How they perceive thehorizons depends on where they stand in the landscape and where their journeytakes them. Where they go depends on the pathways they perceive, choose,

stumble across or clear for themselves, the terrain and the elements theyencounter. Their progress depends on how well they are equipped, the help they


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266 K. Evans

Council for their funding of the Major Award Number L 134 251 011, YouthCitizenship and Social Change Programme. The authors thanks also go to JohnDobby, Senior Statistician, National Foundation for Educational Research, andLouise Dartnell, University of Surrey, for their invaluable help in data prep-aration and analysis.

Notes

[1] The relative neglect of post-school learner and control/agency beliefs in the earlier literaturefrom the social psychological perspective is indicative of the pre-occupation with schooling asthe main site of learning.

[2] This book, published by Macmillan in 2000, combines analysis carried out under both theAnglo-German Foundation funded study and the present ESRC study.

[3] The further interviews were undertaken where it was considered desirable to have additional

interview material available because of differences in balance and emphasis and in the conductof the interviews.

[4] Throughout the research, differences in meanings would have to be addressed. As with allinternational studies, particular issues arise over comparability of educational level andoccupational level. Our approach, informed by previous work (Bynner & Roberts, 1991; Evans& Heinz, 1993; Evans et al., 2000), ensured that these differences in meaning were taken intoaccount from the outset and were borne centrally in mind in the analysis and interpretation ofthe data. The analysis, statistically, utilized cross-tabulations, factor analysis, index constructionand correlations including some multivariate work. The qualitative interview transcripts werefully transcribed, coded and analysed with the aid of the software package NVivo.

[5] While the samples reected the ethnic composition of the population in each of three settingsin each locality, the numbers were insufcient for conclusions to be drawn.

[6] The greater visibility and general awareness of social inequalities in Leipzig, compared withDerby and Hannover, is disproportionately attributed to female perception in the area. This isnot surprising in the light of evidence (Diewald, 2000) that women were among the mostdownwardly mobile groups in the East of Germany following reunication.

[7] A multivariate analysis showed that having a greater number of periods of unemploymentlonger than four weeks was related to perception of chance, political inactivity, being male,older and having had more than one type of setback.

[8] Derby has a signicant black population, Hannover a Turkish population, and Leipzig has anincoming population from Russia and some of the other Eastern European countries.

[9] After exploring NSEC, we decided to use the Registrar-Generals Scale for Coding of SociaClass, which has in-built problems of comparability because of different denitions of skilllevel. Because of difculties of comparing skill level within the manual occupations (combinedwith a high level of non-response to this question), a ve-fold classication has been used forthe purpose of analysis: Professional, Managerial, Other Non-Managerial, Manual, and NeverWorked.

[10] Composite of items including goal orientation and alignment of career with personal interests[11] See Beck (1992), Bandura (1995), Ziehe (1996), and Baethge (1989).[12] Bivariate correlation analyses showed that a planning orientation was related to being of

managerial class, not being of manual class, having had no major setbacks, leaving full-time

education later, being employed and believing that you might move to another area at somepoint in your career.

[13] It h ld b t d h th t th h t k i t t diff b tti I th hi h


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[16] See also ndings of the parallel project in the Youth Citizenship and Social Change Programme(Harris et al.).

[17] Our full treatment of this is in preparation for publication by Kluwer (2003) as a sequel to Fromsocialisation to post-modernity (Rudd, 1999).

[18] See, for example, Heinz (1999), Roberts (1995) and Engel and Strasser (1998).[19] See, for example, Ball et al. (2000).[20] Initial ndings on gender were presented at the American Educational Research Association

Conference 2000 and have been elaborated in Woolley (2002).[21] See Evans et al. (2000).

References

ARNOT, M. (2000) Transforming Girls Schooling: Individualisation, Embourgeiosement or ClassResistance? American Educational Research Association Conference, Montreal, April 2000.

BAETHGE, M. (1989) Individualisation as hope and as disaster, in: K. HURRELMANN & ENGELS (Eds) TheSocial World of Adolescents: International Perspectives (New York, de Gruyter).

BALL, S., MACRAE, S. & MAGUIRE, M. (2000) Young Lives at Risk in the Futures Market (Bristol, PolicyPress).

BANDURA , A. (Ed.) (1995) Self-Efcacy in Changing Societies (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press)BECK, U. (1992) Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity (London, Sage).BECK, U. (1998) Democracy without Enemies (London, Sage).BEHRENS, M. & EVANS, K. (2002) Taking control of their lives?, Comparative Education, 38 (1), pp. 1737BLOOMER, M. & HODKINSON, P. (2000) Learning careers: continuity and change in young peoples

dispositions to learning, British Educational Research Journal, 26 (5), pp. 583598.BLOOMER, M. (1999) Learning career: exposing the complexities of learning, young lives and

transformations. British Educational Research Association Annual Conference, September 1999,

Brighton, University of Sussex.BOURDIEU , P. (1993) Sociology in Question (London, Sage).BYNNER, J. & ROBERTS, K (Eds) (1991) Youth and Work. Transitions to Employment in England and

Germany (London, Anglo-German Foundation).CONNOLLY, J (1989) Social self-efcacy in adolescence: relations with self-concept, social adjustment

and mental health, Canadian Journal of Behavioural Science, 21, pp. 258269.DIEWALD, M. (2000) Continuities and breaks in occupational careers and subjective control: the case

of East German transformation, in: J. BYNNER & R.K. SILBEREISEN , Adversity and Challenge in Life inthe new Germany and England (Basingstoke, Macmillan).

ELDER, G.H. (1995) Life trajectories in changing societies, in: A. BANDURA (Ed.) op. cit.EMIRBAYER, M. & MISCHE, M. (1998) What is Agency?, American Journal of the Sociology of Education, 103

(4), pp. 9641022.ENGEL, U. & STRASSER , H. (1998) Global risks and social inequality: critical remarks on the risk society

hypothesis, Canadian Journal of Sociology, 23 (1), pp. 91103.EVANS, K. BEHRENS, M. & KALUZA, J. (2000) Learning and Work in the Risk Society (London, Macmillan)EVANS, K. & FURLONG, A. (1996) Metaphors of youth transitions: niches, pathways, trajectories or

navigations, Youth, Citizenship and Social Change (Aldershot, Avebury).EVANS, K. & HEINZ, W. (1993) Studying forms of transition: methodological innovation in a cross-na-

tional study of youth transition and labour market entry in England and Germany, ComparativeEducation, 29 (2), pp. 145158.

EVANS, K. & HEINZ, W.R. (Eds) (1994) Becoming Adults in England and Germany (London, Anglo-Ger-

man Foundation).EVANS, K. (2001a) End of Award Report to the Economic and Social Research Council, Youth Citizenship and

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GUDMUNDSSON , G. (2000) Whatever became of society? Keynote Lecture at NYRIS 2000, Helsinki, June2000.

HARRIS, C. (1999) Award in Youth Citizenship and Social Change Programme (Swindon, ESRC).HECKHAUSEN, H. & KRUGER, J. (1993) Developmental expectations for the self and most other people.

Developmental Psychology, 29, 539548.HECKHAUSEN, H. & SCHULTZ, R. (1997) A lifespan theory of control, Psychological Review.HEINZ, W.R. (Ed) (1999) From Education to Work: Cross-National Perspectives (Cambridge, Cambridge

University Press).RAGIN, C.C. (1991) The problem of balancing cases with variables in comparative social science

International Journal of Comparative Sociology, XXXII (12), pp. 18.ROTHBAUM , F.M, WEISZ, J.R. & SNYDER S.S. (1982) Changing the world and changing the self; a two

process model of perceived control, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 42, pp. 537.ROBERTS, K. (1995) Youth and Employment in Modern Britain (Oxford, Oxford University Press).RUDD, P.W. (1999) From socialisation to post-modernity: a review of theoretical perspectives on the

school-to-work transition, Journal of Education and Work, 10 (3), pp. 257279.RUDD, P.W. & EVANS, K. (1998) Structure and agency in youth transitions: student experiences of

vocational further education, Journal of Youth Studies, 1 (1), pp. 3962.SENNETT, R. (1998) The Corrosion of Character: The Personal Consequences o f Work in the New Capitalism

(New York and London, W.W. Norton).TAYLOR, S.E. & BROWN, J.D. (1988) Illusion and well-being, Psychological Bulletin, 103, pp. 193210WOOLLEY, C. (2002) Agency and gender differences, in End of Award Report (full version) Taking

Control? Agency in Young Adult Transitions (Swindon, ESRC).WYNN, J. & DWYER, P. (1999) New directions in research on youth in transition, Journal of Youth

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Appendix: Technical Notes

Representatives of Samples

We acquired samples that were representative of respective populations within setting within areaThis being the case, it is valid to compare any of the nine samples with each other and to view thedifferences as being indicative of differences in the respective populations.

We have no reason to believe that any systematic bias will have been introduced, from the way

the samples were drawn within areas within settings, and hence the expected values of statistics inthese samples should be the same as their corresponding population values. We also have no reasonto believe that the variance of these statistics in the samples will be systematically different fromtheir variance in the corresponding populations, and hence we can estimate the population variancefrom the sample variance and hence the sampling distribution of any of these statistics underrandom sampling. Since extreme results are no more likely to arise from using our sampling strategythan from using simple random sampling, then a result that is found to be signicant using standardstatistical tests can (as usual) be interpreted as indicating that there are real differences in therespective populations. All differences referred to in the text were initially identied as signicantat least at the P ,0.05 level, as a basis for further inquiry and analysis using the full set of data

sources.Occasionally, the setting samples have been combined within area. This is valid for comparative

purposes where the aim is to identify relative response differences that may be attributed to the


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factors (to make the respective factors distinct) and chose a method of rotation (VARIMAX) thatminimizes the number of variables having a high loading on a factor. Factor scales used in theanalysis had reliabilities (alphas) ranging between 0.6 and 0.9. The comparisons of factor score meanswere used principally to identify areas for further analysis using the full set of data sources.


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Evans Agency in Young