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  • Careers of Young Women in T...
    SUGITA, Mai

    The Journal of Educational Sociology, 2018/05/31, Volume: 102
    Journal Article

    Young people choose where they live and work, taking into consideration whether or not they can procure resources that can help to provide them with a better life. This is all the more the case with young people in precarious work, especially women. However, there is little research which shows how the transitions of young people in a big city occur, including with regard to their spatial mobility after graduation. This paper examines the careers of young women in Tokyo in the light of their spatial mobility, based on a panel study of young graduates from the general course of two public high schools. The results show, first, that in the 5 years after graduation from high school, which can be called the first half of extended adolescence, the more unstable and liquid the women’s employment became, the narrower the area was in which they worked and lived. Second, for the women with a relatively high academic background, marriage constrained their vocational and spatial choices. At the same time, for the other women their lower academic backgrounds and more precarious work seemed to be tickets to a stable future, although this was by no means easy for them to attain. Third, from the late 20s to the early 30s, which can be called the latter half of extended adolescence, the careers of women who worked part-time diverged, depending on whether they were married or not and whether or not they were regular employees. This divergence made a difference to their relations with their communities. Non-regularly employed single women who did not take the route to marriage or regular employment tried to keep working without any time constraints and they were then able to move freely and commit to a cultural environment with a high level of personal consumption.