The big issue at the end of the twentieth century in Europe is the process of Europeanisation, including the widening of Europe to the East. This book draws upon a variety of sources to show how different ideas of youth were constructed in East and West Europe in the course of modernisation under both Communism and welfare capitalism. More recently modern concepts of youth have been de-constructed and re-constructed by changes in state policies, the labour market, education and popular culture so that it is no longer so clear who youth are or how they can be helped.

CLAIRE WALLACE has been researching in the field of youth for some twenty years. She is author of a range of books and articles on the subject, including For Richer, For Poorer, Growing up in and out of work, Youth, Family and Citizenship (with Gill Jones), Youth in Transition (edited with Malcolm Cross). Since 1992 she has been studying the transformation process in Eastern Europe and was head of sociology at the Central European University in Prague. She is now a researcher at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Vienna and a Professor of Social Research at the University of Derby, UK.

SIJKA KOVATCHEVA is Assistant Professor at the University of Plovdiv, Bulgaria. She studied sociology at the University of Sofia and was awarded a Doctorate in Sociology. She did a further year of study in sociology at the Central European University in Prague and since then has been working mainly in Plovdiv. She had two fellowships with the McArthur Foundation, USA, both involving a period as visiting Fellow at the University of Notre Dame. She is the author of a range of articles about young political activists in Bulgaria and has worked on research projects about young self-employed and unemployed people in Post-Communist Eastern Europe.