Between Tradition and Modernization, Between a New Dawn and Stagnation: Growing Up in Eastern Europe

Today’s youth is growing up in a climate of social disparity and heterogeneous living circumstances despite the increasing dissolution of borders, the advance of globalization, and the options offered by mobility. It follows that the possibilities provided by these factors, the seemingly greater range of opportunities for individual self-formation and processes of biographical advancement, do not figure in the lived reality of a large majority of young people growing up in Europe—at least not on a grand scale. Owing to economic dependencies and political uncertainties both on the individual and the societal levels, young people are confronted by a multiplicity of challenges as they seek to map out their lives between tradition and modernization, between a new dawn and stagnation.