65

When consider from a sociological perspective, the concept of youth appears problematic, particularly when it comes to understanding how young people fit into society or, more precisely, into social life. Youth represents a brief period in the life course and is subject to the risks and uncertainties of entry into adulthood. Given these conditions, how can we understand the life of an individual for whom social integration is still ongoing?Unsurprisingly, the problems are both theoretical and methodological. This article seeks to explore them using two surveys conducted ten years apart among the same cohort of young people in order to gain a concrete perspective on the social and professional integration of these young people at the end of their university studies. An overview of this research, which dates back several years, demonstrates the relevance of a longitudinal study of young people, for whom a life history approach appears to be the ideal method, despite the difficulties it nevertheless raises from the outset.