Adolescence and youth: From notions to approaches

Abstract

In this text we discuss about the notions of adolescence and youth, as well as the disciplinary approach to the aforementioned concepts at the present time, where it’s no longer a newness —but a necessity— to pluralize: the need to talk and conceive different «adolescences» and «youths», in a wide range of heterogeneities that we can find and visualize among adolescents and young people. This takes validity and makes sense at the moment we conceive the categories of adolescence and youth as a socio-historic, cultural and relational construction in contemporary societies, where the efforts in social research in general, and the studies on youth in particular, have been centered in letting know the stage between the childhood and the adulthood, that —at their own time— are also categories originated by social significations and constructions in historic contexts and defined societies, within a process of constant changes and new significations. We highlight the advances in the field of research in matters of adolescence and youth nowadays and set forth certain questions about the transition from adolescence/youth to the adult age, in order to help define the dimensions and variables that can provide more clarity to the analysis and their eventual impacts in the design and setting out of policies oriented to social individuals.