“Timing” Transitions or “Times” in Transition? Revisiting the Value of Time Suspension for Young People in Italy After the COVID-19 Pandemic

Much has been written to address the increasing complexity of youth temporalities, especially through a focus on when adulthood is reached, an approach that informs the tradition of youth studies called “youth transitions.” This article discusses some of the shortcomings of this approach that were revealed during the global pandemic, through the social distancing measures that were put in place in response to it and how young people reacted to new imposed rhythms. The pandemic has predominantly been seen as a “suspension,” with implications in particular on two different temporal dimensions: on the one hand, young people have experienced profound changes in their everyday lives due to lockdown restrictions; and, on the other hand, at the biographical level, a search for alternative lifestyles has emerged, impacting on mid-term perspectives. These changes urge us to reconsider various phenomena of time suspension associated with youth, such as moratorium and waithood, paying attention to the value that young people attribute them. Borrowing from Flaherty’s work on time work, this article discusses various nuances of time suspensions that allow us to examine agency transformations during the pandemic. It does so by looking at a case study of young people in Italy, and how a disregard for the temporalities that are typical of value to youth appears to have taken place, based on documentary sources and qualitative material analyzed for a project called IANG. By reflecting on the changes in the ways of looking at young people during the pandemic, and zooming in on some rituals that were reworked due to lockdown restrictions such as the final school exam, I conclude that we should shift attention from “timing transitions,” to “times” in transition, and look more attentively at the meanings attributed to various forms of time suspension that make up youth through specific youth temporalities.