Youth in Transition. Eastern Europe and the West

摘要

This book can be regarded as a part of the ongoing debate on the state, the life situation and the life chances of the young in a changing world. The analyses are focused on young people in their twenties. On their path to adulthood and independent life, the young are affected by external conditions, and they experience the positive and negative influences of different global processes as well as local specificities of their particular society. Ken Roberts sets himself the challenge of analysing, comparing and contrasting the situation of this life cohort from a multidimensional perspective. Indeed, he does not just focus on the young in particular nations, but he aims to consider the situation of global youth. The starting point for the analysis is Eastern Europe, or rather countries which were part of the former Soviet bloc, no matter what their specific situation was: whether they were semi-independent states like Poland and Hungary, part of the former USRR, east or west of the Urals. The book attempts to juxtapose the situation of young people from such countries with that of their counterparts from other parts of Europe and the USA.