Young Italians: Individualization, Uncertainty and Reconquesting the Future

This chapter discusses the usefulness of the temporal approach in illuminating the specificity of youthful experiences. In particular, it examines how this entails a redefinition of biographical coordinates and identities that are increasingly less attuned to the medium-/long-term future as a central biographical reference. The institutional obligation towards individualization impoverishes the ability to construct qualitatively significant links between the individual and the social. In analysing the connection, what must be underlined is the splitting of two central dimensions of young people’s biographies: independence and individualization. The uncertainty that characterizes our time has a different quality from the uncertainty of early modernity. The chapter concludes with a reflection on one of the strategies with which young Italians today face the uncertainty of social life and the difficulties in relating to the world of work: the decision to look for work outside Italy.