Queering transitions: coming of age outside the heteronormative framework

My contribution addresses the issue of Lgbtq young adults’ lives in Italy: it explores the impact of structural conditions on people’s subjectivities through the increasing difficulties of young men and women transitioning to adulthood. The overarching fragmentation of paths is influenced by global processes, including periods of crisis and precarious labour markets, and reinforced also by national aspects, such as ineffective welfare state support. Moreover, as a matter of social integration, trajectories differ not only on class and socio-economic status but intersect also with cultural attitudes, in particular those that shape gender and sexual identities’ expectations. In order to deepen knowledge of contemporary changing patterns, it is therefore useful to gain insight on the specific routes of outsider social groups and their individual experiences towards the construction of non-mainstream adult identities. This presentation will describe the preliminary results of an exploratory analysis within two case-studies, based on an ongoing doctoral research carried on through narrative interviews. The collection of autobiographical stories highlights subjective positioning, individual strategies dealing with constraints and social expectations, and the experiences that subsequently arise. In comparing two different realities, both in terms of economic opportunities and of cultural views, the relations between external conditions and subjective meanings arise. Focusing on this specific phenomenon with a queer and intersectional approach it is possible to deconstruct not only conventional representations of youth subjectivities, namely those related to heteronormative standards, but also to question the category of adulthood in itself which appears to be increasingly challenged by the interplay of multidimensional dynamics