Challenges and life orientations of youth. The context of transition countries

Abstract

This paper focuses on the life orientations of youth living in postcommunist countries. Although a large part of them function today within the same global organism, their political past still differs them from the other countries, defining in a special way all the socialization space the youth grow up in. The analyses undertaken in this paper try to argue that this is not only the problem of the political heritage, but much more complicated interaction between transformation and globalization processes, that can be described in terms of glocal space, where nothing is the same, starting with socialization process, through life opportunities, and ending with political significance of youth. Empirical basis are here existing data collected in an international project covered Poland, Eastern Germany, Latvia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Russia, China and Vietnam. The analyses show life orientations of youth - representatives of the first generation, who have grown up intellectually within the new system - as an important driving force of changes, on the one hand, and equally serious source of social and political tensions, on the other, possible especially where the ?aspiration gap? (the distance between what young people aspire to and what they can achieve) is large and concerns considerable part of youth.