Vägar till vuxenliv : Trettioåringar från Norrtälje om uppväxten, skolan och vuxenlivet

Sammanfattning: The purpose of this study is to investigate, and if possible explain, how background, childhood, and education in a municipal or regional context can affect young peoples’ life trajectories. The living conditions for the population in the coastal region Roslagen with its geographical and historical specificities has during centuries largely been characterized by practical crafts-manship. With a growing share of non-permanent residents in the region with demand for help and services, this culture has during the later years been able to prosper. The social reproduc-tion in the municipality also seems to be extensive. In addition to original background, appar-ently the municipality’s service-dominated trade and industry culture has also affected the choice of education and profession of the youth in Norrtälje. The share choosing secondary school programmes aiming for vocational specialization has during many years been relatively high, while the share of those who have continued to study after secondary school has been relatively low. The structure of the municipality’s trade and industry can, despite a harsher competition in the labour market, to a lower extent be said to benefit an academically educated work force. The study is based on interviews with twenty women and men – born in 1980 – who have grown up and gone to school in the municipality of Norrtälje. The interviews have been con-ducted between the years 2010 and 2011. Those interviewed have been given the opportunity to talk about their childhood, education and establishment to profession and to their life as adults. Their schooling coincided largely with the national school reforms during the first half of the 1990s. The result of the investigation underline the conditions described above. Parents with substan-tial education assets and esteemed social positions seem to have had a positive influence on the children’s educational performance and their willingness to continue to study. Limited access to educational, professional and social resources in the home environment in combination with various learning difficulties lead to less successful results in school and lower motivation to continue to study. These latter youths however, have utilized the possibility of the social net-work of relatives which seems to be a contributing factor to professional establishment. One can conclude that the population in Norrtälje with less educational capital has been able to compensate this with a large amount of social capital in forms of social networks. In a municipal and regional context the life trajectories of young people seems to depend on several factors: access to cultural and social capital in the family, school results and not the least on social bonds with relatives and friends and connections to the surrounding nature.