Introduction

This chapter looks at the life chances (LCs) of different generations over the course of the twentieth century and the early part of the twenty- first century. The data used consist of longitudinal studies carried out by social scientists in Australia, the UK and the United States along with the testimonies of people from all walks of life. I have selected the testimonies of individuals – rich and poor, young and old, male and female, the most educated and the least – mainly from secondary sources in scholarly books and articles; the contexts of location and time in which their interviews took place were also important. The chapter includes statements from different generational cohorts that provide snapshots of the lived experience of people growing up in both affluent and impoverished circumstances; young people in employment, in education and on the dole; and students, workers and everyday citizens struggling to make ends meet. If there is a common thread in these stories, it is that people's success, disappointments or regrets have much to do with the access they have to educational opportunities and to the support of stable families, friends and community services. The chapter begins with some reflections on the concept of generation and its principal exponent, Karl Mannheim.

Karl Mannheim's (1893–1947) Generation

Mannheim was a Jewish Hungarian born in Budapest in 1893 to a Hungarian father and a German mother. He was best known as a sociologist of knowledge but for the purpose of this introduction he is of interest for what he wrote about the concepts of generation and generational consciousness. More importantly, however, is that in his short life he witnessed and experienced first- hand some of the horrors of the time. As a young man in his twenties, he was caught up in revolutionary times in Hungary, before and after World War I. Floud reports that Mannheim was briefly employed by the revolutionary government in the ministry of education. Worse was to come with the Great Depression of the 1930s and then in 1933 he was forced to flee Germany for England when the Nazis began their hostilities against Jews and other minorities. According to Floud, he found England most appealing: ‘He found here a liberal social order with a cohesion and durability which his experiences in central Europe had led him to believe was virtually impossible.’