Introduction

The research work carried out by Sostris was based on the shared assumption that our subjects were active and resourceful individuals dealing with all kinds of challenges. This chapter puts this basic assumption to the test. Nicolás from Catalonia and Heike from eastern Germany, two well-educated young adults who, geographically speaking, happen to live at opposite ends of the EU, have both come to a dead end in their life journeys – a ‘biographical blockage’. Although we found it demanding enough to try to understand the processes that brought these two young people to this point, we also wanted to find out how they have coped and where they might go from here. Finally, we were also intrigued to find out whether the profound and rapid social changes that both their (otherwise very different) home countries – Spain and Germany – have experienced in the recent past had any tangible bearing on their personal situation.

We belong to our interviewees’ generation, and have shared similar educational paths. For us, Heike's and Nicolás’ trajectories are disconcerting: potentially, they mirror and contrast with our own biographical paths. We trust that this ‘subjective involvement’ has not distorted the outcomes of our inquiry but has served an indispensable role in the exploration of the social (Ibañez, 1994).

‘Biographical blockage’, and peoples’ experience of it

We contend that the exploration of the interrelation of historical, social and personal dynamics can best be achieved by listening to the voices of the individuals involved. Here, these are people who, in spite of their youth, or indeed because of it, seem to be immobilised or stuck in their current situation without a future that appears accessible or meaningful to them – a situation that we have called ‘biographical blockage’. We understand that ‘biographical blockage’ cannot primarily be defined by objective criteria; for example, both our subjects work full time. Rather, it is constituted by subjective experience. Since these experiences are woven into a wider social context, their analysis yields insights that have a far wider relevance than the individual cases studied.

This chapter aims to raise the profile of the relatively invisible phenomenon of ‘biographical blockage’ and to contribute to a better understanding of it.