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This open access book provides a unique research perspective on life course transitions. Here, transitions are understood as social processes and practices. Leveraging the recent "practice turn" in the social sciences, the contributors analyze how life course transitions are "done." This book introduces the concept of "doing transitions" and its implications for theories and methods. It presents fresh empirical research on "doing transitions" in different life phases (e.g., childhood, young adulthood, later life) and life domains (e.g., education, work, family, health, migration). It also emphasizes themes related to institutions and organizations, time and normativity, materialities (such as bodies, spaces, and artifacts), and the reproduction of social inequalities in education and welfare. In coupling this new perspective with empirical illustrations, this book is an indispensable resource for scholars from demography, sociology, psychology, social work and other scientific fields, as well as for students, counselors and practitioners, and policymakers.

Doing Transitions in the Life Course: Processes and Practices

Introduction

-          Chapter 1: Doing Transitions: A New Research Perspective, Andreas Walther, Barbara Stauber and Richard A. Settersten, Jr.

-          Chapter 2: The Trajectories of a Life, Ted Schatzki 

Part 1: Institutions and Organisations

-          Chapter 3: Welfare States as Transition Regimes: Reconstruction from International Comparisons of Young People's Transitions to Work, Andreas Walther

-          Chapter 4: Young People's Use and Construction of Institutional Support in Transitions from School to Work, Heidi Hirschfeld and Bianca Lenz

-          Chapter 5: Young Adults' Exclusive Educational Careers in the Transition to Higher Education or Employment: Key Findings of a Qualitative Longitudinal Study, Heinz-Hermann Krüger

-          Chapter 6: Organizations as Collective Subjects in the Formation of Transitions Over the Life Course, Eva Heinrich, Nils Klevermann and Bernhard Schmidt-Hertha

-          Chapter 7: Aging Transitions at Work: The Embodied Experience of Becoming Older, Kathleen Riach

 Part 2: Times and Normativities of Transitions

-          Chapter 8: Relative Time and Life Course Research, Nuria Sanchez Mira and Laura Bernardi

-          Chapter 9: Biographical Articulation in Transition, Noreen Eberle, Jessica Lütgens, Andrea Pohling, Tina Spies and Petra Bauer

-          Chapter 10: Beyond the Mundane: "Everything but Ordinary"? Reflections on Extra-/Ordinariness in Life Course Transitions, Anna Wanka and Julia Prescher

-          Chapter 11: Becoming '(Ab-)Normal': Normality, Deviance, and Doing Life Course Transitions, Tobias Boll

 Part 3: Materialities and Transitions

-          Chapter 12: The Multidimensionality of Materiality: Bodies, Space, and Things in Transitions, Deborah Nägler and Anna Wanka

-          Chapter 13: Bodies in Transition: Gendered and Medicalized Discourses in Pregnancy Advice Literature, Janne Krumbügel

-          Chapter 14: How Spatial Sensitivity Enriches Understanding Transitions in Childhood and Later Life, Tabea Freutel-Funke & Helena Müller

Outlook

-          Chapter 15: The Significance of Relationality in Doing Transitions, Richard A. Settersten, Jr., Barbara Stauber, and Andreas Walther