Youths’ aspirations towards the future: agency, strategy and life choices in different structural contexts

Through a comparative analysis of three case studies built on the intersection between three young adults’ trajectories and three LLL policies in Germany, Italy and Bulgaria, the chapter aims to explore the interplay between opportunity structures and subjective choices. We focus on the educational and professional dimensions, putting them into relation within the LLL policy young adults accessed with their aspirations, self-representations, the living conditions they face in the local context and the welfare (Esping-Andersen, 1990) and transition (Walther, 2006) regimes characterising their countries. Relying on the Capability Approach (Sen 1999; Nussbaum 2000), we explore how young people’s capacity to cope with challenges and their ability to actively navigate obstacles are influenced by the wider discursive and institutional opportunity structures in which they unfold their life paths. The analysis reveals how youths make their choices according to their ‘capacity to aspire’ (Appadurai, 2013) and the social, cultural and economic factors at play in exercising their navigational capacities; being able (or unable) to define life plans potentially constitutes a ‘new’ factor of inequality. The possibilities of better capturing the complex relationship between structural limits, possibilities and subjective aspirations in shaping individuals’ choices and actions within specific opportunity structures are discussed.