Social Communities in Transitions: Young Danes’ Narratives on the Change and Maintenance of Social Communities

Abstract

This article focuses on how the perceptions and functions of social communities in different social arenas change over the course of young people’s transition processes. It considers the perspectives of 12 young Danes at different life stages and based on their narratives about family, educational, and leisure communities, we identify different categories of social communities, which are affected differently by young people’s transition processes. On one axis some communities appear as taken-for-granted routine parts of the young people’s lives, while others appear to be labor and maintenance demanding. On another axis, communities are perceived as either essential and as the backbone of the young people’s lives or as more optional communities, which are nice to have but can be given up and replaced. Finally, we discuss how these findings correspond to the theories of change and continuity in the roles of communities.