(Dis-)Continuities and Disruptions in Young People’s Transitions out of Residential and Foster Care

The project “TransCare. Young People's Transitions out of Residential and Foster Care” of the University of Luxembourg focuses on researching the achievement of agency in constellations of transitions. One part of the project sheds a light on former care leaver’s perspectives on their transition processes out of institutional care settings. Therefore, it looks at the experiences of young people themselves.The retrospective and biographical interviews with people who had left the care system, three to seven years ago, give us the opportunity to reconstruct different forms and patterns of transition. On closer inspection, the analysis of the interviews reveals many disruptions, discontinuities, turning points and overlays in the trajectories of the young people already within the care system. There are multiple breaks that influence transitions in other systems, e.g. in the system of education. This leads to various challenges and uncertainties that respondents face. Moreover, in phases of transition specific constructions and changes of affiliation/belongings appear to be handled by the young people. The biographical approach shows in which dimensions young people positioning themselves towards their own person and the institutional setting. It also illustrates in which ways the former care leavers experience themselves in various ways as agentic subjects in their transitions and which conditions and resources play a role in this process of leaving an institutional organized setting. By contrasting the interviews, the reconstructive analysis reveals the relevance of belongings and social relations in leaving care processes. It is asking “how, in a context of increasingly fluid, unstable and mobile lives, young people build meaning through their connections with people and places over time” (Cuervo & Wyn 2017, p. 220) and how different ways and forms of agency are achieved during transition processes.