Understanding youth prolongation: explanations from the experiences of young people from Brazil and Spain

Abstract

This paper aims to understand how young people explain the phenomenon of youth prolongation from their own experiences and their evaluation of the social and historical context in which they are inserted. A qualitative research with a cross-sectional design was developed with people aged 25-29 years old from Brazil and Spain. Individual in-depth and semi-structured interviews were conducted with men and women in both countries, totaling 50 respondents. The interviews were recorded and transcribed, organized and categorized with Atlas-ti® software and analyzed through semantic content analysis. The analysis makes it evident that the interviewees highlighted two different explanation models that refer to extrinsic and intrinsic aspects. The formers refer to the economic crisis and the difficulties in labor insertion of young people, the increase in life expectancy, the social permission and encouragement of the family to carry on with a young life, and the influence of the media in this same direction. The intrinsic explanations would be characterized by value changes-linked to the priority given to financial aspects and professional life-and the growing appreciation of a hedonistic ethics observed among young people.