This volume examines representations of labour in children’s and youth literature and texts narrating childhood and youth. The contributions focus on the intersections of labour and exclusion, ideology, coming of age and social transformation as well as gender. It becomes clear that the aversion to work, which was established for children’s and youth literature in the first study of work representations of texts narrating childhood and youth (Roeder 2022, 9), must be assessed in a more differentiated way for coming-of-age narratives. In contemporary literature, young people at the transition to the world of work become figures of crisis – as individuals in a phase of life characterised by transformations. Coming of age narratives not only address the socio-political conflicts young adults are confronted with, but are also involved in the development of a theory on their significance for life in the 21st century. As projection figures for a broad variety of fears, hopes and fantasies about the future, adolescents and young adults are pivotal actors. When it comes to social negotiations, practices of resistance are attributed to them. And although there are not many explicit scenes of work to be ‘seen’ in coming-of-age novels, films and TV series, labour appears to be highly present through the conceptual framing of a crisis-ridden order, a wage labour society without promising prospects for the future.