The Experience of Youth Transition in Disadvantaged Sectors: Vulnerability and Social Exclusion in Urban Mexico

This paper develops a twofold argument: a theoretical reflection and an empirical exploration of the processes of social exclusion in the transition of young people to adulthood. On the one hand, I discuss the possibility of thinking about youth transition beyond a normative perspective, focusing on the lived experience of this period of the life course; that is, the “experience of transition”. In order to develop and operationalize this concept some preliminary levels of analysis are identified, pointing out the relevance of some meso-escenarios of interaction like the family, the neighborhood, or the school. On the other hand, and based on this theoretical framework, I explore the experience of youth transition in disadvantaged sectors of urban Mexico City. This exploration focuses on vulnerability to social exclusion and three different sources of risk for contemporary youths: transitional, biographical and societal risks. Drawing on an extensive corpus of semi-structured interviews with disadvantaged young people and from a biographical perspective, I analyze the unfolding of a process of cumulative disadvantages in the transition to adulthood.