Becoming individuals: processes of individualization and reflexivity

Abstract

The article aims to show how young adults (starting with empirical research in Italy, but with the aspiration to highlight more diffuse phenomena among youth growing in the constant experience of the ‘crisis’) face the widespread injunction to be active, creative, flexible, and independent, that is, to be entrepreneurs of themselves. Young people born at the end of the last century have grown up in the midst of continuous crises – economic, health, and geopolitical – which have accentuated the tension between the social drive for personal autonomy and a growing awareness of the inability to individually solve problems that are systemic. Although the pressure to develop an entrepreneurial self and to internalize the drive for individualization may overlap with the development of a form of individualism, they can also promote new forms of sociation, based on sharing and cooperation. These forms are strongly supported by dialogical reflexivity, that is, by social conditions that promote processes of innovation and change stemming from common actions and constant confrontation with different points of view. Introducing the concept of dialogic reflexivity, the article analyses the practices that young adults put in place to support forms of individualization released from mere individualism and how social research and public policies can foster reflexive processes and create favourable conditions for youth participation and inclusion.