As part of the structural decline in the number of jobs and the expansion of schooling, youth emerges as a social problem. The length of the work-school coexistence is one of the bases of that matter. In Brazil, the problem emerged in the 1990s with singular contours. In this country, the very expansion of schooling allowed youth to combine their recent school experiences with work, the most important institution of socialization of young people until then. This paper analyzes this issue based on two movements: through the constitution of the notion of youth as a social and analytical position in the Brazilian society and, secondly, by the use of the "tool" to analyze the relative importance of school and work in the transition from youth to adulthood, based on the case study of a specific group of youths from the periphery of Rio de Janeiro.
Youth; Social inequalities; Socialization processes