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European Societies
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Youth in Transition: Eastern

Europe and the West
a
Jackie Brown
a
Childhood and Society Programme , Roehampton
University , UK
Published online: 16 Dec 2010.

To cite this article: Jackie Brown (2010) Youth in Transition: Eastern Europe and the
West, European Societies, 12:5, 767-768, DOI: 10.1080/14616691003732693

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14616691003732693

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 European Societies
12(5) 2010: 767
/768
2010
Taylor & Francis
ISSN
1461-6696 print
1469-8307 online

BOOK REVIEW

Roberts, Ken: Youth in Transition: Eastern Europe and the West, Hampshire
and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008, 19.99, ISBN 9780230214446

Ken Roberts book is an interesting and welcome addition to the discussion

about young people in Europe. It has an ambitious scope, and he adopts a
broad brush approach to looking at how young people in Eastern Europe
and the West compare. Roberts is clear that his gaze is from the West, and
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he takes the view that youth from Eastern Europe and the West share
similarities, but are different, and these differences are worthy of study. He
is at pains to set out that in having a western gaze, he does not assume that
the youth in the West are at a point whereby those in Eastern Europe are
perpetually trying to catch up. Rather, the book aims to put young people in
context, at a particular point in a transitional life stage. In the intro-
duction, Roberts defines the territories of Eastern Europe as countries that
made up the communist bloc prior to 1989, and the West as Western
Europe and North America. On occasion, examples from Australia and
Canada are thrown in for good measure. As a result, both of the broad
approach and of the wide range of countries included, one of the tensions
throughout the book is the juggling act between claiming shared ex-
periences across countries and acknowledging particulars.
Roberts is an experienced and seasoned social researcher, and in writing
this book he is drawing on his research in 12 former communist countries
over the past 20 years. He makes clear that this book is not intended to
reproduce findings from his research in any detail or discuss methodology.
There is mention of qualitative and quantitative research undertaken with
groups of young people between the ages of 20 and 30 and, as a reader, it
would have been interesting and helpful to understand a little more about
his research and how it informed the material presented in the chapters.
Some discussion of Roberts understanding and definition of youth
beyond the idea of a transitional life stage would also have been a welcome
addition. How youth is socially constructed as a category is largely absent
and any cultural differences in how young people are perceived and
recognised is implicit in the text, and something that the reader then has
to infer. The introduction promises that details of his research will appear
as necessary as the discussion develops, which is true up to a point.
However, although Roberts makes good use of the personal experiences of

DOI: 10.1080/14616691003732693 767

 EUROPEAN SOCIETIES

his research participants
usually gained through interview examples

/

presented in boxes inserted in the chapters which give life to the topics
/

additional information about his methodology would have enhanced them.

The book is organised logically with each chapter positioned to help the
reader understand the context of the discussions in later chapters, and he
also identifies traditional areas for sociological enquiry in general, as well
as youth studies. The title of the book, Youth in Transition, is referring
both to life stage, and the transition of the Eastern European countries
where his research has been based. The title also reflects well the
transition in the book itself between established traditional concerns and
more contemporary analyses. Substantive chapters include labour mar-
kets; education; housing and family transitions and gender divisions;
leisure; class divisions; and politics, each providing a wide variety of
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information and description. The theoretical offering of individualisation

and reflexivity is situated in a chapter on its own, after education and
before housing. This more theoretical discussion was helpful in under-
standing social contexts from a more contemporary analytical perspective,
but as a standalone discussion it seemed out of kilter with the flow of the
other chapters.
No text can address every issue or question, and what Ken Roberts is
offering the reader is an accessible introduction to key issues for young
people in Europe today. His writing style makes for easy reading and has
a personal touch with the liberal use of exclamation marks! This book
provides a solid introduction to students of both European and Youth
Studies, providing a wealth of information and detail, presented in a lively
and interesting way. It is a worthy starting point to further debates and
discussion.

Jackie Brown, Childhood and Society Programme,

Roehampton University, UK

768