Youth and social adaptations: a mertonian perspective on inequalities and pathways into adulthood

Studying young people has never been an easy task for the social sciences. Scholars working in this field have always been required to possess a broad and flexible training, capable of integrating different theoretical and methodological approaches (Cavalli and Leccardi, 2013). Over time, however, understanding who young people are has become even more complex, both because of the growing plurality of theoretical perspectives and because of the introduction of new research methods and techniques (Woodman and Wyn, 2015a; 2015b; France and Roberts, 2015; 2017; K. Roberts, 2007; Spanò, 2018). Moreover, the category of “youth” continues to be viewed primarily through the lens of problems and difficulties, rather than through the strategies young people adopt to navigate an increasingly complex and uncertain social reality – one that is nonetheless marked by a general improvement in educational attainment compared to the past, but also by growing precarity and rising educational and class inequalities (France, 2016; Ruspini, 2021). In recent years, however, two Italian sociologists have put forward an intriguing proposal: to recover a Mertonian approach to the study of youth (Pitti and Tuorto, 2021). Revisiting Merton means bringing back to the center two elements of his theoretical framework that are often overlooked: middle-range theories; (Merton, 1968) the means–ends continuum; (Merton, 1938) Placed within the Weberian analytical framework, and particularly using ideal types, these tools can offer a simple yet theoretically robust approach to interpreting the strategies young people adopt in confronting social reality. Sociology has already seen applications of ideal types in the study of youth: one need only recall the works of Goodman (1964) and Keniston (1965), which helped to move beyond the dichotomous view of young people as either “conformist” or “deviant,” a polarization that, in different forms, persists today (Threadgold, 2020). The first aim of this work is therefore methodological and theoretical: to assess whether the use of ideal types can still support the development of middlerange theories and help us understand how young people respond to contemporary social change and associated inequalities. The second aim is to address three research questions: Are there differences among young people in their adaptation trategies, interpreted through Merton’s categories previous described by structural differences? Do these strategies shape the way young people interpret the social reality in which they are embedded? And do they influence, finally, their pathways into adulthood? The underlying hypothesis is that Merton’s categories – conformism, innovation, ritualism, retreatism, and rebellion – remain useful tools for classifying, studying, and interpreting young people’s adaptation strategies. The analysis will therefore begin to corroborate this hypothesis by addressing the questions outlined above. The study draws on primary data collected through a survey administered to a sample of 12.628 Italian young people, aged between 18 and 39 years, representative of the national youth population. The questionnaire, designed to investigate the condition of youth in Italy, includes a typological question (Faggiano, 2012) specifically intended to test the contemporary relevance of Mertonian ideal types.